


The Magic Word

by Juliette1713



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-19 21:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliette1713/pseuds/Juliette1713
Summary: Flashbacks by Maggie and Joel explore their changing relationship while he struggles to get through her checkup - set a year and a half or so after season 5 where season 6 didn't happen
Relationships: Joel Fleischman/Maggie O'Connell
Comments: 15
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

* * * *

"Okay, sit back up for me."

"You can't say 'please'?" Maggie pushed herself back to a half-seated position on Joel's examining table, trying not to smirk while she needled him. He was actively trying to rise above it, but they both knew it was just a matter of time before she won out. 

"Abdominal cavity feels normal. Let's listen to your heart and lungs next." 

"Ooh, let's," she added enough sarcasm that his eyes briefly met hers and she watched him weigh whether to give in to bickering. Instead, he pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and raised the earpieces to his ears. She was still halfway up, lounging back on her forearms, studying his face, looking for any hint that she was succeeding in her goal. 

"Sit up straight so I can listen to you breathe."

She smiled at the impatience in his voice. It was working.

"' _Please_ '," she prompted him again in a teacherly, scolding voice. "Your bedside manner could really use some work, you know, Fleischman. And your manner-manners, while you're at it. Don't make me call Nadine." She grinned when this effort to annoy him worked enough that his eyes met hers and he glared, if only slightly.

"My bedside manner is just fine, O'Connell..." He paused, a sly smile creeping its way to the corners of his mouth. "...as you are uniquely positioned to know." He forced the smile away, and put the bell of the stethoscope near her sternum. "I need to be your doctor right now. Stop trying to bait me into this kind of thing."

"What kind of 'thing'?"

"Whatever it is you're after from me right now. I never know with you whether you're trying to irritate me or turn me on or what."

"It's usually a little bit of both," she said, snagging his tie and pulling him close. "Is either working?"

"Both are." He moved the stethoscope to the other side of her chest, brushing her hand away as he did. "Stop talking and just breathe normally for me." His eyes flickered to hers and back to his hands for an instant before he added a mumbled and grudging, "Please."

She smiled triumphantly and did as she was told.

He frowned as he concentrated on the sounds of her heart and lungs before moving to listen against to back. He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Take a couple more deep breaths for me, okay? You sound a little wheezy, hon...er, O'Connell. You doing okay with your allergies lately?" 

"Yeah," she said, sounding both defensive and irritated.

"Really? You are? Since when?" He leaned forward into her line of sight, a stern look on his face, his words pointed. "You don't have a sore throat? Itchy eyes? No trouble breathing?"

She sighed loudly. "You know the answer to this stuff already."

"I do, but I still need to ask you and then for you to tell me."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I have to record my clinical observations and what my patient reports to me. Me writing in your medical chart that the patient's breathing seems labored against my ear when we're having sex is yet more evidence of a catastrophic failing in professional judgment on my part, that's why. No matter how great it is... Last night especially. "

"That _was_ pretty incredible, huh?" 

He started to smile before shaking his head and breaking eye contact with her. "Stop."

"What?"

"This! I keep telling you - I can't be your doctor and your boyfriend at the same time. Okay? Help me out here. Please? How have been doing with your allergies lately?"

"I've been coughing more, and my throat's been bugging me the last couple of weeks," she admitted as he finished with the stethoscope, pulling it from his ears and draping it around the back of his neck again. "But my eyes feel fine, _Doctor_."

"O'Connell..."

"If I even _have_ allergies" she added, sounding sullen. "I'm still not convinced you're right about that."

He rolled his eyes and bit his tongue. He snapped a black ear speculum onto his otoscope and checked her left ear, tucking her hair gently behind her ear as he leaned in. "What do you want to have for dinner tonight?"

He really shouldn't be mixing work and their relationship, he knew, but he was failing at convincing her to believe him about that. He always did. He hoped referencing their collective domesticity in small talk would indulge her enough to keep her behaving properly when he needed her to be. If he gave her her way a little bit, she usually gave him his.

He'd struggled for a long time with being her doctor - in the several months now they'd lived together, in the year and a half they'd been together before that, and particularly in that time when they weren't anywhere near official but kept falling into bed together. He could pinpoint exactly the first time he realized for certain that he had a conflict... 

* * *

Joel rolled over on his couch and reached for his ringing phone. He'd been looking forward to giving fully into his antisocial tendencies tonight. He'd skipped dinner and had curled up in sweats with a medical journal. There was an eighty percent chance the call was his mother, and guilt was virtually the only reason he'd even made the effort in reaching for it.

"Hi, Ma," he said as he answered, trying not to sound too annoyed right at the beginning of the call.

"Fleischman? You busy right now?" Maggie. That was unusual. He could count on one hand the number of times she'd called him at home in the last 4 years. That fact combined with her clipped, worried tone of voice made him immediately concerned. He sat up quickly, tossing his journal to the coffee table.

"O'Connell, what's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. Well, not _nothing_ , but it's just that I was cooking dinner, and I cut my finger. It's so stupid... I wouldn't have called, but it's really bleeding a lot and-"

"No problem." He carried the phone base to the door with him, handset held against his ear with his shoulder, as he gathered together his things. "I'll just get my bag and be right over. Listen, take a clean cloth and wrap it -."

"Did you have to specify that I use something clean? I'm not an idiot, Fleischman."

"- around your finger and apply direct pressure," he continued, ignoring her. "Sit somewhere comfortable, try to relax. I'll be there soon."

He checked his medical bag was stocked, pulled on his coat, and toed into his shoes, not bothering to tie them. If she'd called him for help, it had to be fairly bad, so he moved as if time was of the essence.

On the drive over, his mind wandered, considering the precarious truce he and Maggie had called a few weeks ago, after Mike's departure. That they'd reconciled after all of that was a miracle. They'd tried to fall back into their usual bickering pettiness during that debacle over his invitation to Maurice's party, but they'd had to call another truce. Things had changed between them, that much was certain - and forever, it seemed. Not that that was a bad thing.

But he wasn't sure, either, whether it was a _good_ thing. They got along better without protracted, vicious arguments, of course, but he had no idea where they stood. Having sex in that barn a few weeks ago did nothing but muddy the waters. A lot. He didn't struggle with whether that part was good or not...

He shook his head to bring himself back to the situation at hand. This had nothing to do with whatever was going on between them - this was medicine, he chastised himself, and he'd do damn well to remember that and put their history aside for the moment. He turned on the radio for distraction and arrived at her place in less than ten minutes.

"O'Connell?" He called her name as he let himself in through her front door.

"Couch." He saw her laying on her back with her hand perched on top of a cushion on her chest.

"Hey," he said, approaching her and tossing his coat sideways onto her living room chair. He set his bag on her coffee table and started making mental notes as he helped her sit up next to him. _Eyes are alert, normal pupils, slight pallor to her skin, no clamminess, slightly nervous demeanor...and gorgeous, parted lips that I want so badly to_... Well, that was an unhelpful line of thinking.

"Let me see it," he said trying to sound brusque and businesslike, hoping to conceal where his mind had just gone.

She bristled instantly. "Jeez, Fleischman. I'm terribly sorry to have selfishly interrupted your evening plans by bleeding everywhere." She thrust her hand towards him. "Here. It's killing me right now, too - you could be a little nicer."

"Sorry." He gently unwound the washcloth from around her finger.

"Like I said, I wouldn't have called you if it weren't really-"

"Hey, it's okay. It's good you called. I'm sorry I sounded so terse. I didn't mean..." He trailed off as he caught quick sight of her wound and rolled the cloth back over it. "Wow. Okay, honey, you need stitches. Hold this tight on there for me. I'm going to scrub up and set up my suture kit. Let's sit you at the kitchen table, too - better light there."

"Whatever you say...honey."

He cringed at the telling slip-up she'd obviously noticed. He helped her up and to the kitchen table, setting his medical bag beside her on the tabletop and pulling out a tube of medication. He unwound the cloth again and put some on her wound.

"This is a topical combination antiseptic and analgesic - prevent and infection and numb you before I do this. You ever have stitches before?"

"It's not really that bad, is it?" Here we go, he thought, with Maggie second-guessing his medical opinions. 

"Yes," he said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. "It's a long, jagged laceration. I know you don't think much of my medical skills, but this is pretty textbook."

"Is it gonna hurt?" Her eyes were wide and worried. She wasn't questioning; she was scared. He couldn't believe it - _her_ , scared. He immediately switched to a gentler, more reassuring tone.

"Shouldn't. You'll be numb, and I'll be gentle." She still had worried eyes that were locked on his. "I promise. Look, these are nice, small sutures that go in really fast, too, okay? You'll do great. Trust me." He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and turned to go wash up. "Or try to, at least."

After he'd scrubbed up, he pulled his glasses from his pocket. He put them on, removed his suture kit from his bag, and picked up the needle with his driver.

"These are sterile. I promise," he said, more to himself than to her. He looked over the top of his glasses at her eyes. She was watching him thread the surgical needle with curiosity. "Just keep your eyes on my face while I'm doing this, okay? I don't need you passing out on me."

"You are not that interesting to look at. And I'm not prone to fainting, you know," she said, sounding defensive as he laid her hand on the surgical pad he'd laid out. "I can field dress a deer. And have. Several times."

"You can what?" He picked up his tissue forceps and examined her wound, deciding which end to start on. In reality, he didn't particularly want to hear another word on that topic, but as long as she was annoyed with him and talking, she wasn't focused on her wound.

"Gut one. Remove its internal organs. I don't think a tiny cut on my hand is going to mean you need to get out the smelling salts."

"Your call," he said, not wanting to argue. Even if she felt fine, he suddenly felt something he never had - a little woozy. The laceration that bisected the first finger of her left hand was bad; it was deep, jagged, and went almost halfway around her finger. He'd seen worse, of course; it wasn't the cut's appearance that made him feel sick. It was knowing it was hers. He forced forward a new conversation to distract himself, both from feeling ill and that concerning revelation.

"How'd you do this to yourself, anyway?"

"Cooking. I made lasagna tonight and was cutting up some bread I made to have with it. Italian bread. You know, that kind of crusty on the outside, soft on the inside bread that's hard to cut into. My hand slipped when I was pushing hard."

"Serrated knife?" He laid his first stitch, tying off its knot.

"Yeah. Bread knife."

"You tore yourself up pretty good. If you'd been pushing much harder, you'd have lost the tip of this finger," he said, tying off his second knot. He looked up at her again and saw that same worry in her pretty green eyes. "You'll be just fine, though. Promise."

"Thanks, Fleischman," she said softly, and he knew she meant it. "How'd you learn to do this anyway? Stitches, I mean."

"Um...well..." He tied off another stitch, recalling the earliest days of med school. "Second year, when you start learning clinical skills." He laughed quietly, remembering his discouraging start. "They hand you this board that's got shoelaces in it. Honest. To practice tying surgical knots, you know? All the boy scouts and outdoorsy types picked it up fast. You'd have been great at it." He paused, smiling to himself. "As for me? I was terrible. Just terrible, at first. I couldn't tie knots to save my life."

"Yeah?" His eyes were trained on his hands, but he heard the smile in her voice. "Anyone who's seen you tie a tie knows that, Fleischman."

"Yeah, well, I figured it out. Eventually. You graduate to pig's feet after the shoelace board," he continued. He'd stitched his way around to just below her fingernail already, laying the sutures close together. "I bought a bunch of them from a butcher's shop on 162nd. I'd cut 'em open and then stitch 'em back closed again and again. Anything of that consistency works, though. I did it to a chicken breast once." He laughed again. "Elaine almost killed me for that. Was supposed to be our dinner, but she wouldn't eat it after I'd 'operated' on it."

He paused and snuck a glance at her face. She was smiling fondly and watching his hands as he worked. She seemed fine, unbothered by the low-key gore of her own bloody injury. He felt a little better, too, since her wound was closing well, and she wasn't as worried as before. She caught him looking; her eyes met his and were greener than he'd ever seen them.

"Then what?" Her voice was still soft and her smile still fond.

"What do you mean?"

Her smile grew. "The stitches?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry," he put his eyes back on his work. He'd momentarily forgotten what he'd been doing. His brain struggled to regain control. "It's closing well."

"Good...but I meant your story. When did you first try it with a real, live patient?"

"Oh. My first time was stitching up a college guy at 3 am in the ER. Fell down a flight of stairs holding a beer bottle at a party. Almost severed the ulnar collateral ligament in his thumb. Didn't drop the bottle, though. He was very proud of that - told me that about six different times while I worked. The attending looked him over, motioned to the tray, and told me to stitch him up. I told him I'd never done it before, and he told me he knew that. I figured he'd watch me and make sure I was doing it right. But he left. Found out later it's always trial by fire like that. So I'm standing there with this drunk guy and all I could picture were those pigs' feet I'd gotten so good with and how they looked absolutely nothing like a human being with a laceration that needs closing. Anyway, I was trying to keep my hands steady and get the sutures in there perfectly spaced and uniform... The attending never even came back to look at them. The guy was too drunk to notice how long it was taking, but it took me forever. Probably 20 minutes for 10 sutures. Don't worry, though; I'm pretty adept at this now." He paused and tied the last knot. "And you are done."

She lifted her hand up and examined it. "Not bad, Fleischman. Good spacing, too."

"Thanks."

"It's not going to leave a scar, is it?"

"Well...yeah. It probably will. Faint one, but yeah. Sorry."

"S'okay. Learned my lesson, I guess."

"I'll clean this up and get it bandaged for you. Keep it covered and out of water for a few days. Try not to use it, either, if you can help it - this laceration transverses your distal joint, which is going to slow healing. It's why I put so many in, too. I'll get out of your way here when I've cleaned up. But come see me in 2 days so I can check on it, okay?"

She lowered her hand, and her eyes met his with familiar sparkle as she gave him a smile. "Okay."

He'd cleaned and dressed the wound, scrubbed up, and was putting his things back in his medical bag when he noticed her standing beside him again.

"Stay for dinner tonight." Her voice was quiet, the words spoken like a question, even though they hadn't been one. No matter how badly he wanted to, that was not a good idea. "Please?"

"You sure?" He closed his bag and straightened up before turning to face her. She was much closer than he'd realized. Almost as soon as he'd had that thought, she closed the distance between them and kissed him. Her arms moved around him, and he instinctively kissed her back. At the first chance he had, he pulled back, intending to ask her his same question again, albeit now under very different circumstances, but she cut him off.

"I'm very sure. About dinner and about this."

He kissed her that second time. From there, his memory started to blur. He remembered kissing their way upstairs to her bedroom. He remembered unbuttoning her shirt, and he remembered being momentarily grateful he hadn't bothered to tie his shoes as he kicked them off just before falling with her into her bed.

Afterwards, he lay next to her, his arms around her as she faced away from him. They'd done this before, of course, but they had both gotten comfortable pretending that that had been the result of a one-time unusual meteorological condition. This had just been _them_ \- soberly, intentionally, but helplessly nonetheless - having sex. Laying next to her, he started kissing her along her shoulder, and she leaned back against him, their hands laced together along her hip. He hoped like crazy she couldn't read his thoughts right now, or divine them from his kisses. He was having a hard enough time processing them himself. 

He had no recollection of who said what, while laying there together, to prompt them head back downstairs and have dinner. They eventually made their way downstairs, though, and neither mentioned what had just happened again that night. Their meal was somehow far less awkward than it had any right to be, given the circumstances. He washed the dishes while she dried, under the pretense that she needed to keep her hand dry. He really just wanted to prolong his stay. The night felt like a date, which, of course, it wasn't. Or was it?

On the way home, well past his usual ten o'clock bedtime, he reflected on the bizarre night and its implications for the future, ultimately concluding he couldn't explain the former nor predict the latter. That thought he'd kept pushing away all night came back to the surface, too, and he was no longer able to force it away. It was the one that answered why he'd felt sick working on her sutures, why things had happened the way they did, and why he knew there was a lot more behind her 'please' than a simple invitation to stay for dinner...

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * * *

"What do you want to have for dinner tonight?"

"Us? Dinner?" Maggie was surprised; he'd been pushing back against her playfulness the whole appointment, trying to stay serious, keep that professional wall up between them. She hated when he did that. He always said it was something about clouded judgment and poor diagnostic work, but he was such a perfectionist he couldn't actually believe he'd come undone over a little bit of flirting...

They had established a comfortable closeness in their relationship, so it unsettled that self-conscious part deep inside of her the rare times he pushed her away - that same part that whispered to her sometimes that he couldn't possibly love her as much as she loved him. The insecurity that made her - before Joel, at least - choose guys who were lucky to have her and who wouldn't - or couldn't - do better. They'd all gone, of course, though not by choice. Until Mike. He'd stung the most because she'd been the surest he wouldn't leave, and he'd been the only one to walk away voluntarily. Joel was the one only one she ever truly feared losing. And yet, the one who always said he wouldn't stay was the only one who ever had.

"Yeah, dinner," he said, with playful sarcasm, as she felt him tug gently on her ear. "That meal we usually eat at night. What would you like it to consist of this evening?"

"I don't know," she said, closing one eye involuntarily against the odd feeling of the scope in her ear. "Let's see...Maurice gave me this great chardonnay yesterday for fixing the alternator in his truck - we could have that," she said, as he finished and walked around the exam table to check her other ear.

"You do know what dinner is, right, O'Connell? Wine's not dinner."

"No, but it informs the rest of the meal. So I'm starting there. We could have that and a salad and then some linguine with -" she giggled as he swept her hair back from her other ear, which tickled the side of her neck. She leaned sideways and landed against his chest, still laughing. He exhaled in frustration.

"O'Connell."

He was too tightly wound for his own good, as usual. She turned and placed a lingering kiss to his throat, just above his collar, tugging teasingly on his tie as she did.

"Don't do that," he said, his voice both warning and pleading at the same time.

"I can't help it if I laugh," she said, her voice thick with faux-innocence. "You know I'm ticklish."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Oh, come on, Fleischman. So you're breaking a rule. Big deal. What's the point in even breaking it if we can't have a little fun while you do?"

"We've talked about this, O'Connell. Endlessly. I am on very thin ethical ice as it is, still acting as your physician, and I'm only doing so out of absolute necessity and geographic circumstance."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "What, do you want to break up every time I sit on this table, just so you don't get in trouble? Who is going to know?"

"Come on. It's not just blind adherence to a medical code. I can't do my job well if I can't be clinical. Detached. I don't want to miss something I should catch. With anyone, but especially with you. I am trying to be your doctor. Okay? Right now I can't think about us." He paused and that grin came back to the corners of his mouth. "Or how I have an encyclopedic recall of every spot on your body that makes you giggle."

"I do not 'giggle'." She was daring him not to react now and saw the start of something in his eyes. She watched him take a slow breath. 

"Let's try to stay on track for 5 more minutes. Open up so I can take a look at your throat."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What's the magic word, Doctor?" 

"You are my least favorite patient," he added, half-smiling at her. 

She just waited.

"Please?" He rolled his eyes. "Pretty please?"

* * *

"You cold still?" They were the first words either had said since they'd fallen and everything had happened. And then happened again. Before all was said and done, they'd do this several more times this afternoon, wrapped together in a stiff, scratchy blanket surrounded by the freezing air of this barn.

Joel's voice was soft and nervous, but his words were languidly spoken as he held her to him while trailing slow, lingering kisses along her shoulder blade. His fingertips moved lightly along the length of her arm, and his knees were tucked just behind hers. She was usually quick to get up, once things were done, not wanting to seem too emotional or needy. Now, though, she wanted to stay like this as long as possible. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she tried to push away the startling realization that she could get very used to feeling adored by Joel Fleischman... 

He was unexpectedly affectionate and gentle, particularly after the very un-gentle way they'd been that first time. He seemed wholly unable to keep his hands - or mouth - off of her, which she hoped was a good sign, particularly because all she could think about was doing that again. Immediately.

"Um..." Maggie paused, unsure suddenly of how to talk to him. They'd spent his first two years in Cicely settling into a comfortable way of relating to each other - antagonistic, yes, but with enough flirtation woven in to make both of them cheerfully seek more of it. But ever since whatever it was that almost happened between them in Juneau the previous spring, things had been strained between them, particularly after the appearance of Mike. 

Within the last few days alone, they'd viciously argued, threatened each other with legal action, been moved to acts of physical violence (well, she had), and had topped it all off today by finally having sex. Not just sex, but reckless, uninhibited, raw, feral sex - tearing at clothes and rolling together across the hay-scattered dirt floor of this barn. It was an incident that had started as yet another argument. As soon as they had the courage to look at each other afterwards, it abruptly happened a second time. To say she wasn't sure where she stood with him at the moment had to be the understatement of the year. His uncharacteristic silence made it hard for her to tell whether he was still happy, angry, apologetic, horny, or some combination thereof. Hell, she wasn't sure which of those she was herself. She knew she wasn't cold, at least, so she was at least able to answer that question with confidence.

"No, no. I'm okay. Thanks for getting that blanket."

"Welcome." He slurred his answer against her skin, his lips still kissing her as he nudged her down to lay on her back. He drew their blanket further around her and moved his leg up to rest across hers, all without removing his lips from her skin. "You sure you're warm enough? You keep getting goose bumps. All over you." His lips continued their seemingly unending tour of her shoulder, moving now across to her neck. "I can feel them."

Her skin reacted again as his breath moved across the skin he'd just kissed. "I'm really not cold. I promise."

"Then why are you covered in-"

She giggled suddenly as he passed over a ticklish spot, which made him pull back quickly to look at her in surprise. His eyes were dark, and their corners quickly crinkled happily as he smiled at her. "I've never heard you giggle, O'Connell."

"Shut up, Fleischman," she said, feeling her cheeks flush and a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. "You just tickled me, that's all."

"Oh yeah?" He looked suddenly playful, leaning down to kiss her neck again. "Where, here?" He brushed his lips higher. "Or here?"

She tried to hold back another giggle, but her traitorous body and resolve failed. Strange as it was given the personal, intimate acts from before, she felt more exposed and shy reacting like this to his touch. She also felt giddily happy when, hearing her laugh, Joel chuckled against her neck. She couldn't help but comb her fingers affectionately through his hair.

"Oh, O'Connell..." he said, kissing just under her ear. "I can't tell you how happy it makes me that I've found this out about you..."

"What, that I'm ticklish?"

"That, too." He crawled above her, his body following his lips as he kissed across her collarbone. She held back another laugh as she felt little pinpricks rise across her neck and shoulders again as he found another spot.

"And there..." he mumbled the words against her skin as his lips continued to traverse her body. "Your coracoid process..."

"That's my collarbone, Fleischman. I'd think you, of all people, would know that. And, what - are you making a list of every single place on my body where I'll laugh when you kiss me?"

"I hadn't planned on it," he murmured, before kissing her at the base of her throat. "But I didn't really plan on any of this. This bone here," he said, tracing his fingers across the upper part of her chest, "is called the coracoid process; it is not your clavicle. It's actually part of your scapula. Trust me on this; I aced anatomy. I'll prove it." He disappeared beneath the blanket, methodically and slowly kissing his way down the center of her chest. "Manubrium..."

"You really know how to get a girl in the mood, Fleischman."

"Sternum..." He planned a kiss just in the center of her chest as he eased his hands down her sides. 

"Even I know that one, Fleischman..."

"Xiphoid process... upper rectus abdominus... your costochondrial joint..." He kept moving down her center, announcing each part's name as he kissed the skin above it. She traced her fingertips along his shoulders and smiled at the rafters of the ceiling above her. This was so strange, so different than how they normally related. But it was dangerously addictive. And wonderful.

How long could they keep this up today? Twice, now, they'd had sex. The last time had been a little less frantic than the first time, but no less intense. Afterwards, they'd laid in silence, like after the first time, huddled inside the blanket he'd found, with neither still quite knowing what to say about the current situation, and both fearing its end. He'd started kissing her, she assumed, to keep his mouth from saying anything that might hasten that ending.

Now, even after they'd braved talking, his lips were still on her, moving slowly along her ribcage and she squirmed and laughed again, drawing another happy chuckle from him. "Another spot. I can do this in Latin, too, if you want...obliquus externus abdominus..."

"I'm terribly impressed by this, if you can't tell," she said, sarcastically, ruffling his hair. She felt herself smiling besottedly, glad he couldn't see her face. It was actually impressive - hot, even, in a strangely cerebral way. Not that she'd tell him that. Or that she was completely and irretrievably under his spell for the moment.

"Oh, you want impressive, do you?" He abruptly varied his course and kissed down towards her hip. She looked down curiously at his form moving beneath the blanket. "Your inguinal ligament..."

She giggled involuntarily. "What are you doing?"

"Another one. And the illiaopsoas..." He drew his lips along her upper thigh, his destination slowly dawning on her.

"Ohhhhh...really? You do this kind of thing? _You_?"

"Not usually," he admitted. "But for you? Today? Absolutely." He kissed further towards her inner thigh. "Adductor longus...so, can I?"

"'Usually'? When was your last 'usually', anyway?"

"Ten minutes ago. So, can I?"

"What happened to your punctilious grammar? It's 'may I'."

He chuckled again and slid his hands down the sides of her hips. " _May_ I, then? Please?"

His voice sounded so much like him, and yet not at all. There was that familiar bickering, bantering tone, but then something else altogether - something new - threaded through it. Something that made her weak enough in the knees to be grateful to be already laying down. 

"Fleischman, only you would ask for permission over this."

"Gracilis muscle..." His lips were very, very close to dangerous territory now. "So that's a yes, then?"

"Only if you know what you're doing."

"I always know what I'm doing, O'Connell..."

"Particularly in the area of humility," she said, trying hard to sound haughtily sarcastic, her breathy delivery failing her. She resolved to try harder to sound dispassionate. 

"Pretty please?"

"Fleischman, if you think you can do this, be my guest. But you have to be the most arrogant, overconfi-" The fourth syllable disappeared, strangled by a sudden gasp as she pulled in lungful of the cold midwinter air, as he moved against her.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * * *

He clicked off the light on his scope, and she closed her mouth. 

"Your ears are fine, as always, but your throat's really red and irritated."

"You know what it probably is? I bet I have strep. You know what it was, I was babysitting for Miranda on Friday afternoon - remember? She kept fussing. I bet she -"

"She doesn't have strep, and neither do you," he said, cutting her off before she got any further down the path of an attempt at a medical diagnosis. He gently tapped her nose. "All of this is allergy related. Lean back for me. I need to look in your nose."

She narrowed her eyes. "No."

"No?"

"No." She folded her arms across her chest. "I've been very patient about all of this unnecessary poking and prodding so far..."

"This is hardly for my entertainment..."

"...but I draw the line at you looking up my nose."

He sighed frustratedly. "And I suppose you have a better idea of how I can look at your adenoids."

"No, but I'm not risking our sex life over a little allergic reaction."

"What does your lymphatic system have to do with our sex life?"

"You looking up my nose is not exactly conducive to you continuing to find me desirable."

"I really don't think that's going to be a problem."

"No, because you're not doing that."

"You cannot be serious. You've spent half this appointment trying to distract me from my clinical work and entrap me into acting out some sordid sexual fantasy of yours, and now you're worried that I -."

"Sordid fantasy of _mine_? You mean to tell me you've never thought about you and me, in here..."

"It's you and _I_...and it would be ridiculously inappropriate if I had - about a patient of mine?"

"The patient you sleep next to every night? I notice you didn't deny it." She poked her index finger into his chest.

"O'Connell, this conversation is over. Look, how about a compromise," he said, catching her finger and stilling her hand. "Tilt your head back, and I'll pretend you're someone else when I look. Shelly. Ed. Maurice, even."

She considered it.

"Please?" After no reaction, he added, "Or I will call _your_ mother."

* * *

"Sir?"

Joel looked up from his book. The flight attendant was back again, leaning across Maggie to check in. She'd been by four times since serving them lunch. He'd never flown in first class until this trip and was still not at all used to the much more attentive level of service. 

He'd had no idea they'd be flying first until they'd entered the departure area of Anchorage airport and been ushered into a lounge. She'd sipped champagne and shrugged it off as no big deal, and it fast became clear she always flew this way. That was his first sign that, had he ever doubted the stories of her upbringing, she was about to be proven right. Maggie's family occupied an entirely different world than he had grown up in. Of that he was sure, now, on their way back home - that, and she'd greatly underplayed their dysfunction.

"Yes?"

"Would you like anything else? Another ginger ale? A blanket for your wife, maybe?"

"Oh, her? No, no - she's not - we're not married." He spoke quietly and smiled at the sight of Maggie sleeping against his shoulder. "But a blanket would be great, though. If you wouldn't mind. Thanks."

He was glad she'd finally gotten some sleep. They were both exhausted, she slightly more than him from absorbing the emotional stress of the last 36 hours. She'd carefully arranged this trip back to home for her grandmother's 80th birthday like a surgical military strike, working hard to minimize the amount of time she'd have to spend with her family. He couldn't quite blame her, now that he'd seen what she was hiding from. The downside to this was that their flight back out of Detroit left at 11 am, prompting her mother to insist on serving everyone an elaborate breakfast before that, at 8. With the time change, when her alarm went off, it felt like Maggie and Joel were waking up at 3. 

She'd bribed Joel to Michigan with floor seat Pistons/Knicks tickets, after begging seemed to fail. Truth be told, a simple 'please' was sufficient, and he'd have gone with her anyway, tickets or no. Protesting all the way, yes, but he wasn't about to pass up a chance to leave Alaska. Even if it meant going to Detroit. And even as her boyfriend. He certainly wasn't going tell her that, post-bribery, though. It was a great game - the Knicks had won, and he was one of about 10 people in the entire arena who was happy about the outcome. 

They'd gotten to the game just before its 7:00 tip off and hadn't gotten back to her mom's until late. She was stalling, he knew, pretending after the game that she wanted to detour by old landmarks and then get a late night slice of pizza at a favorite place. What she really wanted was to make sure they'd get home after everyone was already asleep. He indulged her, partly because he knew - first hand, now - what she was trying to avoid. The other reason he played along was something he was trying hard to pretend he wasn't feeling - something he'd been trying to ignore for months now. Something posing as her boyfriend was not helping.

They slipped in the O'Connells' front door just before midnight but still weren't tired. With the time change, it only felt like 8 o'clock. Maggie checked the front hall closet for their bags, but her ever-attentive mother had already brought them upstairs. They found them in her old bedroom.

"Oh, God. Fleischman," she said, turning towards him.

"What is it?"

"She put your stuff in here. And mine. I can't believe her!"

"Why?"

"You're supposed to be in Jeffie's room."

Joel chuckled, "Yeah, well, I think he's using it right now. And probably more upset about it than you are."

"No, she did this on purpose."

"Did what?"

Maggie looked exasperated with him. "Put your stuff in here with mine!"

"O'Connell, I am so lost right now, I couldn't find my way with a -"

"It means she assumes we're sleeping together!"

"And?"

"And?!?"

"You're the one who dragged me all this way under the pretense that we're dating. Now you're mad that it worked and everyone believed you?"

"No, but the house rule has always been 'not until you're married'. She must figure I'm a lost cause. A fallen woman. Irredeemable. Great."

"Well...it's not like you haven't..." He trailed off the second her icy stare hit him. "I just meant, I really doubt she's advancing some hidden agenda by where she's putting our bags."

"Yeah, well, then you don't know my mother." She crouched down to unzip her bag, using a lot more force than was necessary, at least judging from the noise the zipper made.

It had been awhile since Joel had been in a relationship, but he knew when he was in trouble - fake girlfriend or not. If only he knew exactly why. He turned from his bag to watch Maggie hover over hers. 

"O'Connell..."

"You might as well change for night," she said, picking busily and angrily through her bag. "My bathroom's through that door."

"So we're really sleeping in here? Together?" He looked dubiously from her to her pink duvet-covered double bed and back to her again. "Kind of small for two people, isn't it?" _Particularly when one is furious with the other_ , he added to himself, _and prone to acts of violence_.

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I guess I could sleep on the floor or something."

"Don't be ridiculous. You're not doing that." The notion was hospitable, but her tone felt more like a threat.

"You're saying you actually _want_ to share that bed tonight? With me? That is, in fact, your plan?"

"Of course it is," Maggie said, pulling a toothbrush and toothpaste out and bringing both into her bathroom. "The last thing my mom needs to see, after sticking us in here together, is us not in it together."

"What, is she coming in for a bed check later? How would she ever know?!" Joel put his bag gingerly on the bed and started fishing for his toiletries while Maggie brushed her teeth. The whole evening had taken an unsettlingly domestic turn. Including the familiarity of their arguing.

"She just will," Maggie mumbled, past the toothbrush in her mouth. "Like I said, you don't know my mother. Look, keep your hands to yourself, and we'll be just fine."

They hadn't been. It _was_ entirely too small a bed for two people not used to sharing one with someone else. It was cold and drafty in the room, and neither could get comfortable. Plus, it felt far too early, still, to be tired. Instead, they'd stayed up talking, whispering, really, to keep from waking everyone else. Facing each other in bed with the duvet pulled up to their shoulders they'd stayed warm and talked about her parents' settled divorce and her brother's apparent impending one. She recounted other revelations her grandmother had shared and told him stories about her from childhood. He started sharing his own stories, and before they knew it, it was 4 in morning. He couldn't think of the last time they'd just talked like this, and it had never been for this long. Her eyes kept reflecting the moonlight filtering in the window and seemed to sparkle when she laughed. He found himself delaying sleep as long as he could just to keep it going. Their alarm came far too early the next morning.

Even with showers, three hours' sleep looked pretty rough on both of them. At breakfast, her mother kept casting a critical and disapproving gaze Maggie's way. Joel saw it before Maggie and was surprised that Jane almost made it the ten minutes she did before saying something, in that icily backhanded way she had. 

"Mary Margaret," she began, her voice artificially sweet. "You know, if you ever forget to bring your makeup home with you, you are always welcome to borrow some of mine."

"My 'home' is in Alaska. And I don't wear makeup, Mother," Maggie said without looking up from stirring her tea. Her tone was terse and her words pointed and clipped, but polite. Just like her mother's. That tone scared the shit out of Joel. The Maggie he was used to was straightforward and unfiltered to a fault; the arguments she and her mother had were almost like dog whistles - so high above him, they almost escaped detection. Almost. "You know that," she added.

Joel bit his tongue. For a couple of years now, Maggie'd used the smallest hint of eyeliner almost every day. He'd even watched her apply it this morning while he shaved, crammed next to her in her tiny bathroom. He knew enough to know this sure as hell wasn't the time to keep everyone honest. 

"Dear, you're past _thirty_ ," he mother said spitting out the word like it was a curse. "And this might be a good day to make an exception. You look a bit of a sight."

"I think she looks great," Jed said, leering at Maggie over a plateful of bacon, wearing an ingratiating smile. Joel rolled his eyes and took a sip of coffee. Jed had been released from the hospital late last night with instructions to see a cardiology specialist as soon as possible. He had instead chosen to show up at the O'Connells' for breakfast, plop himself down at the table opposite Maggie, double down on cholesterol, and ignore Joel's existence as best he could. 

The two older women - sisters, he thought he'd understood, but couldn't discern their connection to Maggie's family even now - who'd again joined them, tittered quietly together over a shared joke, ignoring the table's conversation.

Jeffie said nothing, seemingly absorbed in swirling his spoon slowly through his cereal. He'd been fairly quiet all morning. Understandable, Joel figured, for someone who'd gone from married to sleeping alone in his childhood bedroom and contemplating divorce in less than 12 hours.

Every one of them was crazy, Joel had come to understand. He'd somehow found himself in a world where Maggie was the sanest person for miles. The trick was in keeping it all straight and hoping to diffuse things before anyone's psychosis set off a negative chain reaction in another unstable person. When that failed, keeping his mouth shut had proven smart.

"Even a little undereye concealer would help," her mother continued on. "Really, dear, you look as if you were up half the night."

Maggie clinked her cup down onto its saucer roughly and looked up at her mother with a smirk. He felt Maggie put her hand on his between them on the tabletop and braced himself. He knew that look all too well; things were about to really escalate. 

"Oh, we _were_. I'm surprised you didn't hear us." 

_Well, that ought to do it_ , Joel thought to himself.

"Jesus Christ, Mare," grumbled Jeffie, shaking his head without looking up. 

Jed glared at Joel as Joel tried to stifle an amused smile.

The sisters exchanged a titillated glance, their eyes wide open in mock surprise.

"Jeffrey, language! And Mary Margaret! It's Sunday, for heaven's sake. No offense, Joel."

Maggie curled her fingers through Joel's, determined to make him party to scandalizing her mother. Joel saw Jane's eyes take in their clasped hands before coming to rest on his face. If the situation didn't strongly suggest otherwise, he'd have sworn she was smiling at him a little. He looked quickly at his coffee cup.

"It's the time change," Joel added meekly, trying to find the strength for another hour playing peacemaker. "Four hours' difference from Alaska to here. We couldn't fall asleep..."

"So we kept ourselves entertained. Until _late_ ," Maggie added. Joel glanced sideways at her, hoping to discern just what the hell she wanted him to do right now, but Maggie's eyes were glued to Jane's face. For her part, Jane reached forward and lifted her teacup again, her expression once again placid.

"Well, it's just a suggestion. It's always nice to look nice. Or at least not quite so slovenly," her mother added, as if neither had spoken. She smiled acerbically at Maggie while sipping her hot lemon water. "You're not getting any younger, and I'd hate to see you lose another one. Especially a doctor."

"You're absolutely right, Mother," Maggie said, her words terse. "Excuse me for a minute while I go freshen up." She stood abruptly and left the table. 

"She'll feel better when she looks more pulled together," Maggie's mother added, after what felt like an eternity of awkward silence, seeming nonplussed about her daughter's departure. "She's always been very touchy about her appearance. Now, Joel..."

"I should really check on her," Joel said, grateful for the chance to excuse himself. Upstairs, he peeked in Maggie's bedroom door and found her sitting at the foot of her bed, which was already made and with hospital corners. She had an old, threadbare stuffed animal in her hands. He entered and closed the door behind him.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, Fleischman." Well, that was predictable. Maggie didn't do vulnerability, at least outwardly. 

"Look, I'm sorry about downstairs earlier." He moved closer to the bed, hovering nervously in front of her. "I just didn't know if you wanted me to keep on your mom's good side or play along with what you said or what, so I..."

"I'm not mad at _you_ ," she said. "For once."

He sat down beside her, and she turned and smiled at him in a way she hadn't ever before. "I _am_ fine, Fleischman. Really. I think I'm just too far out of practice for this."

"I don't know how you grew up like this."

She shrugged. "You're a good diversion for everyone, at least. You handled yesterday better than I thought you would. And they all think you're great. Even my mom." She looked back down at the stuffed animal in her hands and seemed, in every way, the opposite of fine.

He wished he understood her better; he knew she was upset but wasn't sure about what exactly. Her family, certainly, but she seemed so adept at handling it all. Was she mad that they liked him? Wasn't that what he was supposed to do this weekend - be the boyfriend her family would find impressive? Was he wrong - did he screw this up somehow?

"Sorry."

She laughed finally. "For what?"

"That they liked me. If it helps any," he added, glad to hear her finally laugh, "your brother doesn't like me."

"He doesn't like anyone. He's _interested_ in you, though. Which is as close to liking someone as he gets. And Grammy liked you."

"Well, maybe, but I _know_ Jed doesn't like me." He bumped her shoulder with his affectionately. "Skinny dipping, huh?"

"God, Fleischman..." She looked embarrassed and blushed slightly, bringing one hand up to partially cover her face. "I was drunk. In my defense. And a teenager. With a whole big group of people, too; it wasn't just Jed and I. We never even went out. Regardless of what he may have told you." She broke eye contact with him and looked back at her hands, setting the stuffed animal aside.

"O'Connell, what's wrong? Tell me. Please?"

"I'm not mad they like you. But I didn't bring you here to impress anyone."

"Then why -" He stopped when he realized the answer to his own question. He wasn't there as some successful boyfriend trophy - she just wanted him there - as a witness, as a friend, as an ally - someone she trusted. He wasn't there to make her look good to her family; he was there _as_ her family.

"But somehow it ended up that you're the only boyfriend my mom's ever liked. The one who isn't real..."

She looked up at him again, and her gaze slipped for a second to his lips. Without warning, she leaned towards him; her hand was on his knee before he realized what she was doing. Her lips were soft against his, and he wrestled for a second with whether she was currently in her right mind, doing this. Was this part of her rebellious act? A strange way of saying thank you for putting up with this ruse? Or was this them? It sure didn't feel like she didn't mean it. He started to kiss her back, and she pulled closer. Her mouth opened against his, and his worry quickly shifted to how this was going to stop once it got started. Her bedroom door suddenly opened.

"Mary Margaret?" Maggie pulled back quickly, and they both turned to see her mother at the door, taking in sight of the two of them on her bed. "Oh! My goodness!" She made a big show of looking surprised, backing back out of the room, pulling the door shut, and knocking again loudly. "Hello?"

Maggie gave the door an exasperated look but didn't move away from Joel. "Come in, Mother."

"Is everybody decent now?" Jane pantomimed covering her eyes as she entered. "I'd hate to interrupt anything polite eyes shouldn't see."

"We're just finishing packing," Maggie said, standing up to walk towards her bag. "We should probably take off. Returning the rental car always takes longer on Sundays." She wrestled the larger bag, her knapsack, and her coat quickly out her bedroom door as her mother watched her disapprovingly. 

"Oh, let your brother take those down for you; they're heavy," she called after Maggie. "Or I'm sure Joel would have," Jane said, turning to look at Joel, still seated on the bed. "Such a polite young man," she murmured, smiling.

Joel didn't move. "I'll carry my own down. But she'd kill me if I tried to carry hers for her." He Jane a shrug and a wry smile. It was the truth - why, in a weekend-long charade had he suddenly drawn the line at carrying her bag to the car, he wasn't sure. But Jane just smiled back at him in response - not an ingratiating smile or a polite smile, but a genuine and fond smile.

"Frank was right about you," Jane said softly. Whatever the hell that meant, Joel had no idea.

They looked at each other in silence a bit longer before Jane turned to follow her daughter down the stairs. If nothing else, this weekend established where Maggie got her ability to make him feel intrigued but terrified with just one look...

On their flight later that morning, the stewardess returned, passing Joel a blanket.

"Here you go, sir. You sure I can't get you anything else?"

"No, thanks." He set his book on the seat beside him and started unfolding the blanket.

"So you two really aren't married?"

"No," Joel said quietly, reaching across Maggie to cover her as best he could with the blanket. "We're not. Not even close."

"Really? That's too bad. Nice guy like you and a pretty girl like her? I see a lot of couples in this job, and I usually have a good eye for these things. You sure there's nothing?" She gave him a dubious look and put her hands on her hips playfully. "You're killing my track record, here."

"Sorry. Friends. Not even quite that, usually."

The flight attendant looked dubiously at Maggie, sleeping against Joel. "At least let me try to play matchmaker for two minutes. You two seem very close..."

"You have no idea how lucky we are that she's asleep right now..."

"Well, promise me you'll give it some thought. Please?"

Joel chuckled. "I'll take it under advisement."

The flight attendant smiled and left, and he finished settling the blanket over Maggie and smiled at her again, still trying to forget that kiss in her bedroom, before returning to his book.

"In your dreams, Fleischman," she murmured groggily moments later, before repositioning herself against his shoulder.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

* * * *

She relented, and he looked briefly up each nostril before setting the otoscope back into its holder on his way to his scrub sink.

"We done, then?" Maggie, unable to disguise her impatience. 

"Almost. You still seeing Dr. Heath in Juneau for your, uh..." He gestured vaguely with his hands before putting them under the faucet. 

"Yes, Fleischman?" She said, feeling hugely amused by his discomfort with the topic. "My what? I'm not sure I know what you're getting at with your question."

"Women's needs?" She saw him blush, which made her laugh. The exasperated look he tossed over his shoulder guilted her into seriousness.

"Yes, I am. And I had a clean bill of health on all of that when I went in July, too. They should have faxed my appointment records back here to you for my files."

"They did. I looked at all of it before you came in, too. I always do."

"Well, what the hell are you asking me for, then?"

"I'm supposed to ask anyway, even if I know. Makes people think someone's watching out for them and underscores the value of preventative visits. Incents people to keep going in for continuing care." He dried his hands.

"They teach manipulation in med school?"

"It's a useful and necessary skill anytime you're dealing with people. You're almost done. I'm giving you a prescription for a mild corticosteroid nasal spray since _Maurice's_ sinuses look inflamed. It's seasonal, I think. Being cooped up inside in dry air." 

"See? All you're picturing is my nasal passages now."

"I have much more entertaining mental images of you filed away, believe me," he murmured to himself while pulling a pair of latex gloves from a box. "Nevermind. What are you doing the rest of this afternoon?"

"Is my doctor asking me? Or are you?" She warily watched him don his gloves.

"How would that change your answer?"

"It wouldn't, really, but I'd like to know if this is just a line of idle chit chat you use with everyone, or if you actually care what I'm doing later."

"It's both - just, in your case, I'm genuinely interested in the answer."

"I'm having lunch with Ruth Anne and then rebalancing my prop. Plane's vibrating like crazy ever since Red took it to Talkeetna last week."

"You'll have to go easy on your arm, then," he said, holding up a blood draw syringe and two empty vials.

"I really need my blood drawn?" She felt her face contorted into a pout, and saw Joel trying hard not to laugh in response.

"Yes."

"Fleischman..." she whined.

"O'Connell..." he retorted, mimicking her whine and clearly basking in the rare moment where he was unequivocally the adult in their relationship. 

"Please? I just did this."

"Last year, you did. You're due for a full panel this time, too. You're not skipping out on this. Marilyn's got the tray all set up for us - it'll all be over in 45 seconds, tops," turned towards her and straightened her arm. "I'll give you something at the end if you're good, too."

"Yeah? I thought we couldn't flirt while you do this."

He wrapped the rubber tourniquet around her bicep and swabbed her skin with iodine. "I was talking about a lollipop. Look over at my eye chart; I'll tell you when I'm done."

"You're no fun."

"So you've said for the last six years," he said, nonplussed, syringe in hand. 

* * *

"He's just not fun anymore. You know?"

The conversation turned this way so suddenly, it almost felt like whiplash. They'd just been laughing together and swapping stories of embarassing moments. Maggie'd told Elaine about getting drunk on expensive wine and coming on to Joel a few weeks ago. She wanted to believe she picked that story magnanimously, to make Joel look virtuous - the loyal fiance who didn't dare cheat even when he had the chance. She knew, deep down, she'd done it for another reason, though, and now she worried it had worked too quickly and too well. Even though Elaine didn't seem even the slightest bit jealous or concerned... 

She'd come to visit Joel at the worst possible time, as it turned out. Everyone in town, including Red, who was supposed to fly her in from Anchorage, got the flu. Maggie fetched Elaine instead, but her reunion with Joel still didn't come together as planned because of the outbreak. He'd never worked so much since he'd arrived in Alaska a few months prior. Maggie took it upon herself to entertain Elaine in his absence. She didn't have any close girlfriends, really, and grew up with just a brother, so the idea of a day or two of giggling, girl talk, and female camaraderie was enticing. If alien. Moreover, it'd make Joel antsy and nervous, so it was a win-win, as far as she was concerned. Unless, as it turned out, he already had cause to be that had nothing to do with her. That she'd be making worse.

Now, Elaine sat beside Maggie next to the fire they'd built and roasted marshmallows over, poking her stick at the smoldering logs, looking unhappy. They'd hiked all day and were splitting a much less expensive bottle of wine than the one Maggie and Joel had shared. Elaine drank quite a bit more than her fair share of it, and then started talking about Joel. A _lot_.

She'd been one of four girlfriends of Joel's in junior high and high school, as it turned out, and the one who had emerged victorious when he matured to the point of monogamy. Maggie felt her jaw just about hit the ground when Elaine had told her that, trying to picture Joel Fleischman sought-after and suave enough to necessitate (and handle) juggling multiple girlfriends at once.

Once he'd decided on just Elaine, she said they settled into a sweet and overall happy teenage romance. Their parents became fast friends; they moved in together after college, and he'd proposed two summers ago. Maggie figured they'd been weathering Joel's time out here as best they could, but she sat, wide-eyed and ill-prepared, while confirmation poured out that she was wrong.

Elaine's statement hung in the air between them, begging for Maggie's response, as the fire in front of them crackled and popped.

"Well...sure, I know he can be kind of high strung, closed-minded, set in his ways," Maggie said, trying to be loyal to the conversation but feeling even more guilty than before. She needed to talk Elaine back from whatever ledge she was teetering on or risk Joel thinking Maggie had tampered with his engagement. "But in a kind of endearing way, if you think about it. And he can actually be fun. Fun _ny_ especially. I mean, he's really..."

"I cheated on him, Maggie."

"What?" She hadn't bargained for this kind of conversation at all. This would explain Joel's hostile attitude some, if he'd been struggling with a crumbling relationship since he'd moved. Unless... "Wait, does he know?"

"No. No..." Elaine's eyes met Maggie's, worried. "Please don't tell him, either. I was going to as soon as I got out here and got settled, but he was so glad to see me...and then everyone got sick and he had to work and... just promise you won't tell him?"

"'Course not. But... are _you_ still going to tell him? And end things between you?" Maggie pictured Joel getting this news, and no part of her triumphed at his impending misery. He'd be shattered over this; she even felt a little shattered for him. "You know what? Maybe...maybe telling him isn't necessary. I mean, it's only gonna...plus, what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Especially if it was just a one-time-"

"No," Elaine said, shaking her head and looking down at her hands. "You don't understand. I _am_ cheating on him. Still. I met someone else after he moved here. Someone older," she said, laughing a little to herself. "A lot older, actually. And he's absolutely nothing like Joey. He's not Jewish. He's not even from New York. He's been married twice already. Doesn't want kids. Isn't what I'd ever thought I'd be looking for, but we fell in love. It just kind of happened. My parents would kill me. And Joey'd...well, I don't know exactly what he'd do. I thought I did, but now..."

He'd be miserable, Maggie knew. He'd implode. Elaine and the promise of his life in New York were what got him through his days here, and regardless of how many more he still had ahead of him, he seemed to need to know that that life was waiting for him at the end of them. 

"I know I don't love him anymore. I did. But I don't now. I thought if I came out here, maybe seeing him again...but, I mean, he just...he's so suspicious. He can't just roll with the punches. He thinks life is out to get him and that everyone around him has an ulterior motive, you know?"

"He's just analytical," Maggie said, uncertain why she felt suddenly compelled to defend Joel. "Smart. And cautious because of it. He _is_ actually a very caring and compassionate-"

"And he hates it _here_ ," Elaine said with disbelief, gesturing to the sky which was scattered with bright stars. "I mean, how can't he see this? There's this beauty that's all around him and he's blind to it all..."

"Well, he- I think it'd be different if this were his choice. His plan. I could see how if you were forced into this, you - he - anyone - would be a little-"

"And he's the least spontaneous person in the world, too," Elaine continued, when Maggie paused, stuck on how to finish a rebuttal about Joel's attitude towards Alaska. "Totally stuck in his ways-"

"But that's not so terrible," Maggie said, cutting Elaine off. She was usually so quick to criticize Joel herself, she felt surprised at the depth of her negative reaction to someone else doing it. "Spontaneity isn't always the best thing in a guy, believe me..." She trailed off, thinking of the many nights Rick didn't come home, deciding instead to stay overnight in some city without even having the courtesy to call and tell her.

"Maggie?"

"Yeah?" She felt like she weighed a thousand pounds, this revelation crushing down on her conscience from above. She also felt conspicuous, like Elaine might have read something into her earnestly offered defense of Joel. She was kind of stuck on where all of that had come from herself...

"I don't feel all that well all of a sudden... Can you take me back to Joey's place?"

"Sure. Let's get out of here." 

Maggie doused the fire and packed up their things in her truck after helping Elaine into it. Elaine had felt warm - warmer than she should be on a fifty degree night, even after having sat near a fire. When Maggie got into the driver's seat, she put her hand to Elaine's head.

"You've got a fever," Maggie said, starting the truck. "I bet it's this flu. Flu symptoms come on fast. Here, let me feel your lymph nodes." She put her hand to the side of Elaine's neck and felt gently. 

"Joey can't stand it when you do that."

Maggie pulled her hands back and put her truck in gear, starting them out of the field and towards the nearby dirt road. "Do what?"

"Make medical pronouncements. Act like you know better. All of that stuff."

She sounded like she felt terrible. It had to be the onset of the flu but drinking two thirds of a bottle of wine surely hadn't helped.

"Yeah, well, he hates it when anyone does it."

"He _really_ hates it when it's you, though. He spends a lot of his brainpower being irritated with you, specifically. It almost seems like...nah, nevermind." She laid her head against the window and closed her eyes. "Sorry, you've been so nice. It's probably the fever talking."

This was a hell of a conversation to find herself in, Maggie thought. Elaine almost seemed to want Maggie to ask what she'd been about to say. If she did, though, she'd look too eager to hear more about Joel. If she didn't, then she'd lose the chance to contradict the implication that there was something between them. Maggie decided to deflect with practicalities.

"Let's get you back to his place. I can call his office when we get there, okay?"

"Maggie?"

"Yeah?"

"I will tell him. Just not now. Please don't say anything."

"Okay. You have my word."

Maggie turned the dial onto KBHR for distraction, and they listened to a hoarse-sounding Chris Stevens air his musings into the mic.

Joel bought Maggie lunch a week later as a catch-all apology and thank you - he'd said it was for entertaining Elaine and being so willing to fly her in on short notice. Apologizing for accusing her of meddling in his relationship was what he didn't mention, but she knew it was top of his mind. As was her guilt over doing just that.

In a lull in their conversation, he started looking at her oddly, as if turning something over in his mind. 

"Out with it, Fleischman. What are you thinkin' about?"

"You know... I _can_ be spontaneous. I don't _choose_ to be often, but it's not as if I can't ever -"

"Why are you talking about spontaneity, all of a sudden? I told you thank you for the lunch, all right? What do you want, a standing ovation?"

"You told Elaine I'm not spontaneous."

"What are you talking about?"

"Elaine. She told me what you said - your detailed list of all my personal faults. No spontaneity. Immune to the beauty that's around me. I think everyone has an ulterior motive; I never cut anyone any slack. Sound familiar?"

It did - only they weren't her words. Elaine must have told him. And then said Maggie'd been the one to say all of it.

"Was any of it wrong? Isn't it possible that there might be things you could improve upon about yourself?"

"Maybe if I were interested in marrying _you_ and not the woman who's known and accepted and, in fact, loved all of these things about me for over a decade now." He tried to sound cocky, but his eyes had a glimmer of uncertainty to them. "Did she say anything to you about us?"

Maggie's heart rate sped up, and she felt an overwhelming sadness, looking across the table and into Joel's dark and expressive eyes. He saw it, and that self-conscious glimmer strengthened.

"Us meaning she and I. Not you and I. Not that there's a 'you and I' in the sense of, like, a _you and I_ , but... all I'm trying to ask you is, you guys spent hours with each other when she was here. Did she say anything to you about me that I should know about?"

"Why?"

"I don't know. You tell me." He knew something was wrong, she could see it in his eyes. She felt torn, but she'd given her word, though, and wasn't about to break his heart or incur the messenger's wrath for telling him what she knew. 

"You guys just had a bad weekend, that's all. Unlucky, I mean. She was sick and you were working..."

"I know that. It's just, something felt..."

"What?" Her heart broke a little for him in that moment. She didn't think he knew about Elaine cheating, but he knew something wasn't right. Something big.

"Nothin'," he said after several seconds, trying to sound fine and obviously eager to leave the subject behind. "You get her to tell you anything embarrassing about me?"

"She did say you had 4 girlfriends in high school. At the same time. I'm more embarrassed for them than for you, though."

His dimple reappeared and his face relaxed a little, a faint pink coloring his cheeks this time. He didn't say anything.

"Well? True? Or false?"

"Guilty as charged, O'Connell," he said, chuckling quietly, as the pink deepened in color in his cheeks and spread across the bridge of his nose. "Only it was junior high. I grew up, though. Eventually."

"I just find it hard to believe that you had multiple women fighting over you. At any age."

"No one fought," he said, grinning slyly, "Mainly because I was so good at keeping it all straight that they didn't know about each other. Until the end, that is."

"Uh huh," Maggie said, rolling her eyes as she took another sip. "I'm hugely impressed."

"I'm here to entertain. The real lesson here, though, is that pehaps it _is_ possible that I have some charms beyond impatience and a lack of spontaneity. Particularly when I'm able concentrate on just one woman at a time." He paused, his dark eyes on hers. She felt a little jolt of attraction in the few seconds' of silence. That was the fourth or fifth time that had happened in the few weeks she'd known him. "Just a little something to keep in mind, if I'm ever so unfortunate as to end up single again. You'll need to act fast." His eyes sparkled playfully, crinkling up at their corners. She couldn't shake that urge - the same one she felt that night with the wine. And the need to deny it all.

"In your dreams, Fleischman."

"Fair enough. But I'm not the one who told my fiancee I was funny, smart, compassionate, _and_ cute."

"I never said cute!"

"Yeah, but you just admitted you said everything else," he said, smiling as he put his cup to his lips for a drink. "And I know you're thinking that last one."

She pretended to glare at him, glad to see he'd cheered some, the fog of Elaine lifted for awhile. In the protracted silence that followed, she decided he was pretty damn cute. Irrelevant though that was...

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * * *

He skillfully slid the needle into her arm and watched the first vacutainer tube fill. Her eyes were closed, face squinched up in an anticipatory wince. It wasn't enough to keep her from correcting him.

"It's been six and a _half_ years. Tell me when you're going to start, okay?"

"I'm glad that's the only context in which you've ever said that to me. Or hadn't noticed when I'd already started." He removed the tourniquet and switched the tube for a second one. "You're almost done, honey. You doing okay?

"'Honey'? What happened to O'Connell, Doctor?"

"I'm relenting for the moment because I know this makes you woozy," he said, setting the vial next to the other on the tray and withdrawing the needle. He pressed a cotton ball and a bandage to her elbow and bent her arm to secure them. "All done."

"No treat?" She raised that damn eyebrow at him and had that glint in her eye. 

He knew where her mind was headed, actually considered it for a second, and then felt frustrated with himself. With both of them, really. He turned away from her and started labelling her samples. "Your treat is that no one's yanked my medical license over this yet."

He'd made it almost entirely through her physical with only a small handful of ethically dubious moments. The rule had been pretty damn simple when they'd explained it to him in med school - _don't sleep with your patients_. That lesson lacked specificity about its caveats - special circumstances like falling in love with a patient but being the only physician for 500 radial miles.

"Hey..." she said, after several seconds. Her hand tugged on his elbow, and he turned around when he'd finished labeling everything. "I do appreciate you trying to balance this for me. Really. I know it's hard on you. Breaking the rules. No matter how stupid those rules are."

He nodded and managed a smile. She seemed to get better and better at reading him, the longer this went on. For his part, he knew he'd never understand her completely, but he'd learned a lot, too, since they started dating - well, _officially_ dating, that is - more than a year and a half ago. Moving in together three months ago had been like a master's course in all things Maggie. It was going pretty well between them now, but, like everything else they did together, that had gotten off to an inauspicious start...

* * * 

"You did _what_?!"

"Calm down." Maggie gave him a disapproving frown before turning to look around the Brick to ensure his shout hadn't drawn too much negative attention their way. It wouldn't have been the first time, of course.

"Calm down?! You've ostensibly left me homeless! Without so much as a hint of warning first."

"You're not homeless. You're moving in with me."

"I'm _what_?! When did we decide that?!"

"Shhhh...keep your voice down. We've talked about moving in together before."

"We have?! When?"

"Saturday. Remember? We were having breakfast. You said you loved waking up next to me."

He waited for the rest of that thought but it never came. "That's it? I...I...I was trying to be romantic, by saying that - not get evicted! There's a whole lot of distance between that and 'go ahead and lease my place to someone else'!"

She only shrugged in response. 

"You're sure there's not more to this story that you're neglecting to tell me?"

"Not really. It's just good timing. Someone asked me about your cabin. Someone who actually wants it, for once," she said, still entirely nonplussed by his rising irritation as she took a sip from the half-empty beer bottle in front of her. "Thing is, they're... kind of in a hurry to move in."

"Uh huh. How much of a hurry?"

"You have to move out by Saturday."

He blanched in reponse. 

"What? I'm lucky to find someone who wants it so badly. It's a tricky one to find the right fit for, tenant-wise."

"Oh, I can't imagine why. Just because it played host to a suicide? And because it has virtually no insulation - so much so you can see your breath at night through all of February? And because there's a termite infestation in the roof rafters? And because it takes 4 full minutes for the water to get warm enough to shower and still feel your extremities?"

"See? You hate that place. It's a win-win, you moving in with me." She snagged a fry from his plate and bit into it before giving him a wry grin.

"Hate it or not, I've lived there a long time...and I'm relatively sure you owe me some kind of notice as my landlord."

"I just gave you notice; you need to move." She finished her stolen fry and grabbed a second.

"By this weekend! It's already Tuesday!"

"I don't see what the problem is. You've got plenty of time. I'll help you pack. Chris and Ed already promised me they'd help move your stuff. And Maurice is letting us borrow that truck of his, plus we've got both of ours. It'll take 3 hours, tops."

"O'Connell! Why does everyone know we're going to move in together except me?"

"I didn't see you until tonight." She swiped another fry. "And we already talked about this. On Saturday."

"Not to this level of specificity, we didn't."

"Whose fault is it that you don't ask follow up questions?"

He opened his mouth to respond and closed it a few seconds later when he realized he hadn't the faintest idea of what it should say next. He had started feeling, like he always seemed to, like he was already losing the argument the moment he realized he was even in it. "But...I thought your mom had some kind of moral issues with this."

"My _mom_? Moral issues with what?"

"You...living over the brush like that."

"Living over the... you sound like my great aunt Mary. Where did you dig up that phrase?"

"Well, _doesn't_ she? When your dad came, he specifically said she'd short circuit if she ever found out you were-"

"He did?"

"Yeah. When he thought we already were. Remember? Personally, that night's forever burned in my memory."

"Well, a, that was probably because it was Rick at the time and not someone she's actually fond of like you - and a doctor she can brag to her friends about her daughter snaring, and, b, the woman is divorced herself these days so her high horse is quite a bit shorter in stature than it once was, and, c, I'm 32 years old. At this point, she'd prefer my living in sin to ending up alone. Anyway, she's not your mom, so what do you care? _Your_ mom is really excited we're moving in together, by the way."

"My _mom_ knows and I don't?!"

"She called your office yesterday when I was there," she said, nonchalantaly as she slid another fry off Joel's plate. "Marilyn told her."

"Even _Marilyn_ knows?! Why didn't you tell _me_ yesterday?"

"There were a bunch of patients waiting, and this seemed like a private conversation about our relationship."

"O'Connell, why wasn't it private with regard to anyone else? You know, if you spent half the time telling _me_ about this that you did telling quite literally everyone who _isn't_ me, then-"

"You don't want to live with me, Fleischman?"

Damn. How did she do that, he wondered - snap from aggressively arguing her point to sounding small and self-consciously wounded by his gawkish mishandling of yet another surprise she'd wrought in their relationship.

"I...no, hey, I didn't mean that..." He struggled to shift his voice into a gentler tone. "It's just that...it's a surprise. And a big step. That's all." Her eyes were now doing whatever her voice had been, and whatever it was, it was calculated to make him feel maximally terrible and apologetic. He swore she could actually make those eyes bigger and greener on cue. "Of course I want to. But...are you sure?"

"Well, no. Not now I'm not, if you're already having second thoughts."

"I just found out about this two minutes ago; these aren't second thoughts. I haven't had a chance to have any first thoughts about it yet." 

"If you really wanted this, you wouldn't have to think about it." She looked away, breaking eye contact. Damn. The only thing that could possibly make him feel worse than that look in her eyes was knowing it was there, completely his fault, and that she was hiding it from him. And for no good reason - he did want this. Badly. What the hell was he arguing with her for? He'd wanted nothing more than to make things more official for months, and here was his chance. He'd all but abandoned hope on any more formality than what they already had, figuring she was too set in her ways and solitary to even entertain the idea. She'd just offered up nearly everything he'd given up on hoping for; he needed to decide he didn't care how she'd done it - immediately.

"Hey..." He nudged her ankle with his toe. "My first thought is that I really want to do this. Honest. My second thought is that I would have asked you to a long time ago, but I didn't think you'd be willing." 

"So you've thought about it before?" She sounded less hurt this time, but still unsure, her eyes watching her hands trace a line in the wood grain of the table.

"Of course I have."

"Well, why didn't you ever say anything, then?"

"Because the last woman I lived with left me and married someone else. And because I didn't think you wanted things any more serious than what we were doing. Living together implies a sort of commitment..." He hesitated, considering whether to confirm what this meant to him. "Permanency, I mean..."

"I know it does," she said softly, finally looking up at him. Everything suddenly dawned on him...

"This had nothing to do with you finding someone to rent that cabin to, did it?"

"Fleischman..."

"You decided about living together first, and then cabin thing second. The first thing led to the other. Didn't it?"

She didn't respond.

"It did! This has nothing to do with real estate... you're just saying that so we can blame this all on circumstance. So you don't have to admit this was your idea and you really want to live together."

"Think whatever you want," she said, piling her silverware and napkin on her plate. "Like I'd make up a tenant. Anyway, I'm done talking about this. We should get out of here."

"Yeah," he agreed, not moving. He watched the blush that had crept into her cheeks with his accusation fade. 

"What? Stop looking at me like that." 

He said nothing and just kept smiling at her as a portly, bearded man in plaid strolled past without stopping, rapping his knuckles against their table as a hello, startling them both.

"Hey, Doc," he shouted over his shoulder as he passed. "You're really testin' the limits of that curse, aren't you, moving in with her like that?"

" _Hayden_ knows, too?!"

"Oh, come on. Get up."

"And go where? We were having dinner."

"And now we're done. And you're inviting me over tonight."

"I am? Remind me, when did my free will evaporate?"

"When we started going out. C'mon. Let's go."

"Hold on. You don't see a fair degree of irony in wanting to come spend the night at a house you just kicked me out of?"

"No. And why do you always resist my efforts at seduction?"

"Because seduction, with you, very often feels like a demand."

"What if I say please?"

"I still can't believe you orchestrated all this..."

She leaned forward and took his hand. He felt her toes against his ankle and her eyes that shade of the green they got when they were... "What about _pretty please_ , then?"

"I'll get our check." 

As if on cue, Shelly appeared, tray in hand, and pulled the check from her apron. "Here ya go, guys. You two must pretty be stoked about moving in together, huh? By the way, Holling said to tell you that if you need munchies or anything Saturday, he'll get something out to you pronto. Don't need everyone keelin' over hungry on moving day."

Joel gave Maggie a look and turned to Shelly. "She told you, too, did she?"

"No I didn't." Maggie was still giving him a look that really made him really question whether he wanted more to be right or do what he was hoping they were leaving to do. If he played his cards right, he could usually swing both, though.

"That's right, Dr. F. She didn't. _Holling_ told me," Shelly said, putting her hands on her hips, tray tucked under one arm. "And _Dave_ told him."

Joel pulled his wallet out and looked for the right combination of bills for his half of dinner. He raised his eyebrow at Maggie as he put money on the table.

" _Dave_ knows, too?"

"That one isn't my fault. Dave's the guy that wants your cabin."

" _Is_ he? I will meet you at the door." Joel slid quickly out of their booth and made his way back to the Brick's kitchen. Dave was turning burgers and adding cheese to them once they were done side up.

"Hey, Dave."

Dave looked up and smiled widely. "Dr. Fleischman! You ready for this weekend?"

"Getting there, yeah. You need some extra space, huh?"

"Yeah. My mom's in that wheelchair now, you know, and Dad's knee is failing. They need more help than they can give each other these days. I've been trying to talk them into moving in with me, but they can't handle the stairs at my place."

"Well, that's great. Nice of you, I mean, to help your folks out like that."

Dave smiled at Joel's compliment, entirely unaware that he was about to inadvertently make Joel's case for him. "It was Maggie's idea, actually. She's been hounding me about it for months, and I finally was able to talk them into moving this weekend. They didn't want to leave their place, but I told 'em all about what Maggie said about that house of yours. How my dad can fish right off that dock, and Mom'll love bird watching from the porch. They can't wait to move now. So it's good timing you're moving out this weekend. Plus, I bet Maggie's a great landlord."

Joel bit his tongue and thanked Dave. He turned around and headed for the door, where Maggie was waiting, and watching him with a smile playing on her lips.

"So. What'd Dave say?"

On impulse, he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her, square in the middle of the Brick. Most everyone knew they'd started going out, of course, but they rarely, if ever, did anything quite this overt in public. Years of hiding their feelings, even from each other, had almost trained them to always exercise discretion, at least when it came to this aspect of their relationship. In that moment, though, he acted with uncharacteristic abandon. His fingers moved through her hair, and he pulled her closer. He felt her hand come up to rest against his cheek. When they pulled back, he put his forehead to hers and smiled.

"Months ago, huh?"

"Have you lost your mind, Fleischman?! Half the bar just saw you do that!"

"I guess it's a good thing you already told everyone in town we're moving in together, then." He kissed her once more quickly, before taking her hand and heading towards the door.

"It was hardly 'everyone'."

"You drive me crazy, I hope you know."

"Yeah, well, it's a short drive," she said, pushing the door open for them. Once outside, she squeezed his hand and added, "I kind of love waking up next to you, too..."

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

* * * *

He turned away from her and grabbed his prescription pad from his countertop. These appointments got harder and harder the longer they were together, rather proving his underlying point right. Not that she was about to admit that to him.

"You should fill this in Anchorage, if you can," he said, over his shoulder. "Your insurance will cover most of it, if you can get it filled in a real city."

"Oh, not this again," she said, feeling herself beginning to bristle. "You know, every time you get mad at life, you take it out on this town. And me."

"I am not mad at life," Joel said, sounding quite irritable as he turned around, eyes trained on his following his writing. "I am not mad at this town, and I'm only a little bit mad at you. Okay? I'm mad at me."

"You shouldn't be. You're a good doctor, sweetie." She wasn't usually one to use pet names, but he seemed really upset at the moment, and she felt her compliment needed some personal bolstering. "Really, you do a very good job of keeping that impersonal wall up between us during these appointments. So much so, I'm a little mad at _you_ right now, too."

He flashed her another terse smile before looking back down at his pad. She knew this was hard on him. She did. It was hard on both of them. He hated breaking rules and being put in the position of making a mistake, and she hated having him push her back to an emotional arm's length during appointments. They were, by definition, at odds during every one of these visits, of which there were thankfully few. She decided to be the adult for once and call their truce this time by returning to factual questions about her appointment.

"So when do I get my results?"

"With a normal patient, I mail them. Well, Marilyn does. I only call people in if there's something to discuss."

"And with me?" She willed herself not to bristle at the modifier 'normal' that somehow didn't seem to include her.

"I'll just tell you if anything needs following up on, at home tonight." He finished writing out her script and scrawled his cramped, illegible signature on the pad, dotting the i in his last name with enough force that it made a staccatoed little noise. "Unless you're dying of appendicitis again, in which case Ed and I will be by in a canoe in a couple of hours." His smile was sheepish and apologetic this time. "I'm sorry."

She smiled back at him. "If you aren't going to give me a treat, can I at least have the lollipop you promised?"

Before she even put together what was happening, he kissed her, pulling her to face him on the table she was perched on. She helped move her body more towards him, putting one knee on either side of his ribcage.

Well, she reasoned, they'd almost made it. Try as they might, they struggled with this part in particular. They'd spent so long pretending nothing was going on that, even now, years after they'd started giving into this particular impulse, their connection and the novelty was still enough of a draw that they frequently found themselves in situations beyond their control. Awkward as that proved to be sometimes, it was much, much better than back when they had to pretend they didn't feel it...

* * *

Maggie watched Joel gently sliding his empty beer bottle from one hand to the other as they sat in comfortable silence together at the Brick. They'd lingered long after dinner and then over drinks. She'd watched him drink three while nursing hers for an hour, still feeling a bit nauseous from the night before. Drinking more than one was another way he'd really not been himself today. He'd been tranquil-seeming (well, for him) and even a little vulnerable as the night and their conversation had gone on. She wanted very much to see more of it, too.

"S'late, isn't it?" He said, as if reading her thoughts, knowing what she wanted, and immediately doing the opposite.

"I can drive you home if you want to stay and have another one," she blurted out, surprising herself.

He squinted suspiciously at her. "You're not drinking?" Surely he hadn't heard about last night. Or this morning. She couldn't remember whether she'd talked to anyone but Adam after she'd gotten really drunk, but she knew she hadn't talked to Joel. His not being there last night was the proximate cause of her drunkenness, after all.

"Nah. And you've had a rough couple of days. Go ahead." She was certain he'd question her motives and refuse, so she was surprised to see him relax back against his seat, considering his answer. 

"I just might take you up on that, O'Connell. You want anything else to drink while I'm up there?"

"Coffee'd be great. Thanks."

He smiled at her in that way he had on the rare occasion they weren't sniping back and forth, and she couldn't help but smile back. "Be right back."

She watched him walk to the bar and talk for awhile with Holling, Ed, and eventually Shelly, as she filled her tray with a table's order. He laughed at something Holling said, looking uncharacteristically happy and unanxious, and she let that feeling of fondness she felt for him sometimes wash over her. 

She'd had a nice afternoon and evening with him. They seemed to both know to avoid talking about anything heavy, despite everything that had happened in the last 36 hours - specifically the appearance and disappearance of his ex-fiancee, Maggie's near-implosion at the Brick last night, and her panicky little display in his office earlier.

Elaine had come and gone and...something had happened in between those things. Maggie didn't know what. She had gone to his office this afternoon to level with him about what Elaine was really after, but Elaine had already gone. And Joel was oddly calm about it. He left work early and followed Maggie on a long walk back to her place, talking and seeming fine, even cheerful. She'd offered to drive them back to town for dinner, and he'd happily accepted. Hours later, though, she still had no idea what had happened with he and Elaine. Even though she felt fully responsible for pushing whatever it was into happening.

It hadn't dawned on Maggie until Elaine's reappearance that not only did she have Joel all to herself this past year, but she kind of liked it that way. The latter thought was the more startling revelation of the two. And she couldn't have been more surprised two days ago to see Elaine, walking down Main Street away from Joel's office and crying. 

She didn't quite know why she did it - to irritate him, to test him, idle curiosity about what might happen - but pushing him back into the arms of his longtime girlfriend backfired in about a thousand ways she hadn't foreseen. For one, Maggie figured things had ended acrimoniously enough that neither Joel nor Elaine would be tempted to rekindle them - she'd been dead wrong. For two, while Maggie thought playing matchmaker might make it seem like she was uninterested in Joel, it only succeeding at making her miserable and jealous. She had no idea her subconscious assumed she had Joel wrapped around her finger...until she'd been so let down to find out she didn't.

She was still dying to know what had happened between them. With Joel still at the bar, she eyed the pile of paper snippets off to one side of their table and the three almost-naked bottles in front of his seat. She remembered a friend in college who always targeted guys with tattered bottles at parties, swearing only sexually frustrated people tore the labels off. Joel had systematically shredded each of his tonight, and here Maggie had been thinking Elaine's reappearance had signified the end of Joel's long period of celibacy. Unless it hadn't. Not that she could ask him that easily. Until his guard was down...

As if reading her thoughts again, he slid back into the seat across from her in their booth, holding a drink. He pushed a mug of coffee her way. "I'm still not convinced this is a good idea, me drinking and you not." 

His usually exacting diction and fussy posture were both slurring into something quite unlike him. The relaxed, easy grin on his face only punctuated that notion. 

"Who's to say you won't take advantage of me in an inebriated state?"

"Oh, in your dreams, Fleischman. I've seen you drunk before and managed to keep my hands to myself. I'm sure I'll rise to the occasion and rally again."

"One time ever, have you seen me drunk," he said, pausing to take a swig of the newer bottle on the table. "And I consider that and everything that happened my first week here to be the result of extreme duress. An apt preview, given that my whole stay here is a protracted example of duress. Pleasant though some parts of it have been..." He took another drink, eyes locked on hers as he did, and she felt a little surge of something run through her.

Halfway through his beer, he seemed like he was feeling its effects. His posture relaxed even further as he lounged with one foot resting on the bench beside her. His thumb picked furiously at a corner of the bottle's label that just wouldn't come free. His eyes rarely left hers and had a glint in them she felt captivated by. Their conversation stayed light, though, and she still wanted to know what had happened with Elaine. She tried a question she thought would be subtle enough to slide past his subconscious unnoticed, tipsy as he was. 

"Your cabin any warmer last night?"

She saw his grin and dimples appear and all of which made her instantly defensive. She felt a blush creep across her cheeks. "What? I fixed the hole in the ceiling yesterday, is all. And I'm curious if it worked."

"I didn't say anything. Okay. You're _curious_... How's your wrist," he asked, his smile mischievous, eyes still locked on hers and sparkling happily.

"Huh?" She hated this, when it was obvious he had something over on her but she didn't know what. She was smart, she knew that. She had always been smarter than most people, with Joel being the rare exception to that. 

He laughed. "The 'sprain'? Guess it healed fast."

"Oh, _that_? No, it still hurts," she said, blushing but lifting her hand and turning it slowly as if to disprove malingering. "No thanks to you. I just used my other hand."

"Ah. I'll update your patient file to note your ambidextrousness. For your next 'wrist injury'." He took a swig and gave her another unsettling smile. "And I appreciate your interest, but Elaine and I kept plenty warm last night."

"I see," she said, irritated with how transparent she'd been - and was still being. "Well, I'm glad for you."

"Good. I'm glad you're glad." He had another drink and set the bottle down on the table. The green bottles were easier to see through than his earlier brown ones, and this one was two-thirds gone already. She looked back up at him, only to see that he'd been watching her. Still. 

"What?" She tried to sound annoyed, not unsettled.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"What? Your roof?"

"No, what happened with Elaine and I. You've been trying to find a way to ask all night. Ask away."

"I have not!" He gave her a disbelieving half-smile in reponse. "Fine. Tell me what happened. But for the record, I'm only asking because I feel partially responsible for you getting your heart broken again."

"I never said I got my heart broken this time...I just said we kept warm last night." That was too interesting a dichotomy to pass up, and he smugly waited for Maggie's curiosity to get the better of her.

"I thought you two ended things. Again. I mean, she left. Right? You two aren't... _are_ you? I mean, you... Because you wouldn't want to..."

"Do you have a specific question I can answer for you?" His fingers were back to picking at the edges of the label again. But that grin of his...he already knew what she was dancing around asking, and the fact she wasn't being forthright seemed to amuse him endlessly. "Or are you just rambling?"

"Fine, you want me to ask, I'll ask. How's a guy who just got laid still as sexually frustrated as you obviously are?"

Sober Joel would have launched into a self-righteous and irritated defense. The Joel sitting opposite her playfully nudged the side of her thigh with his shoe, flashed his dimple, and just looked amused. "Much better. Now, what's that supposed to mean, exactly?"

"Which part?"

"All of it. You think I'm sexually frustrated? You think I just had sex? And what does one have to do with the other?"

"Didn't you? And obviously having sex has quite a bit to do with whether or not someone is sexually..."

"Just ask me already, O'Connell. Did I sleep with Elaine?"

"I know you did. I walked in on you in bed together. It hardly takes a genius to figure out what you'd done the night before."

"What, yesterday? We didn't do a thing together that night. Well, she did borrow my toothbrush," he said, smirking and taking a quick sip of his beer. "Carnal it was not." 

Maggie tried not to let the surprising relief she felt show on her face. She must have failed because she saw him tilt his head slightly, thoughtfully, taking her expression in. Drinking was supposed to loosen his tongue, yes, but also make him dumber than normal so she could slip questions through without tipping him off as to her thoughts. Every bit of his intellect appeared disappointingly intact, and he was actively gathering data on her as they talked. It was unsettling. He opened his mouth and continued after his pause.

"You didn't consider why, if we were doing that, we wouldn't do it in my bedroom? I'm sure you suspect otherwise, but I'm a touch more romantic than a pull-out couch."

"I haven't really thought much about it until now."

He grinned again. "Sure." His eyes were still fixed on her face, and she avoided his eye, watching his fingers work free another small section section of label. 

"At least that explains your anxious label peeling."

"What?"

She tapped the pile of shredded paper. "Only sexually frustrated people peel the labels off beer bottles."

"Oh do they?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're a regular Alfred Kinsey, O'Connell. But your social psychology skills are a little rusty. Because I definitely had sex." He drank another healthy gulp from his bottle and stood up from their table. "But I'd have to be a lot drunker than this to talk about that with you."

"Fleischman, wait, I didn't mean to -"

He took another long sip and set the bottle on their table. "I didn't say I _won't_ talk about it. I just said I had to be more inebriated. That's easy to arrange."

She watched him leave incredulously. He couldn't be serious, and yet she watched him approach the bar. She felt something she couldn't put a name to - something that felt a little like regret, a little like excitement, a little like disappointment, and a lot like jealousy. A moment later, Holling handed him a bottle, and Joel started back towards her.

When he returned, he sat back down and his eyes met hers. His face was relaxed into a sly smile, and that odd glint still permeated his eyes. He took the last sip from his almost-empty bottle, sliding it sideways and moving the new one directly in front of him. He put his foot back up on the bench beside her.

"So why are you so interested in my love life all of a sudden?"

"Fleischman! You asked me to ask!"

"I know. But I'm curious why you're so emotionally invested in the answer."

"I am _not_ emotionally inv-"

"One hour." He finished a third of his drink in two quick swallows and pointed the top of bottle towards her, as he cut her off. "One time offer, O'Connell. I'll drink the rest of this, at which point I'll be pretty drunk. You ask me whatever you want for an hour - no question is off-limits - and I will tell you the absolute truth. Hour ends, and we won't ever bring any of this up again. You're dying to know, and I've got no one else I can talk with about this but you. What'dya say?"

" _Anything_?" He grinned in response. It was too good an offer to pass up - a one-sided alcohol-fueled game of truth but no dare with Joel Flesichman. Sure, the entry fee was tacit admission that she was interested, but the hold they had on each other's attention was hardly a secret at this point. She pretended to think about it.

"Well?"

"Deal," she said, smiling gamely and clinking her coffee mug to the beer bottle in his hand.

He drank another swallow, glanced at his watch, and then settled his now slightly glassy eyes on hers. "Ok. Go ahead."

"So you guys...?" She felt suddenly shy, awkward.

"Yes. Twice, actually."

"When?"

"Last night."

"And it was...?"

"Great. Totally unlike anything we'd ever done together before. Amazing. Fantastic. Pick your adjective."

Maggie felt that same twinge of what she sure hoped wasn't jealousy move through her. She wasn't looking for an assessment of quality with her question. "But you broke up? It's over?" That sounded far too eager...

"We never got back together. But, yes, I'm never gonna see her again."

"But you're happy about this?"

"Elated."

"Why?"

"Well..."

He never flinched, never wavered, and only slightly slurred his words as she fired personal question after personal question at him. 

Confirmation that they had slept together bothered Maggie in a way she hadn't expected. He said seeing Elaine now had finally given him the closure he'd needed to move past it. He knew for certain now that he wasn't in love with her anymore. And that notion, too, made Maggie feel another something she hadn't expected.

Maggie let her questions drift to the more distant past, and he opened up to her and talked about his early relationship with Elaine, shifting from there more generally to his young adulthood. She was unabashedly fascinated by him for the moment, and he seemed glad for the chance to talk it all through.

He snuck a glance at his watch during a conversational lull. "We're getting close to an hour. Credit where credit's due, this has all been very restrained, very tame coming from you."

"Tame? I asked you really personal questions! What, do you think I have some juicy question I've been sitting on all this time that I'm too meek to ask?"

He tapped her thigh gently with the foot perched beside her leg. "I know you do. In fact, you asked the question already, and I never gave you an answer."

"Yeah?" Her mind flipped through questions quickly, trying to see where she hadn't gotten a response to something seedy.

"Yeah," he said, glancing down at his watch again. "I deflected by answering with a question myself. But that is, unfortunately, the hour, Miss O'Connell."

"Suit yourself," she said, pleased she sounded disinterested. Her mind was screaming, _What the hell question do you mean??_ "Let's get out of here."

He shrugged and stood, following her to the door.

She drove him to his place, and he was calmer than normal - still and recalcitrant - so they rode in relative silence, without his usual nervous chatter. Her mind was turning their last tantalizing exchange at the bar over and over again. The only thing worse than not being let in on a secret was knowing she wasn't being let in. Her anxiousness and the dim hope that he might tell her if she could get him talking again caused her to take over his usual neurotic, hypertalkative role. She provided a steady stream of innocuous observations as they drove, but he stayed mostly silent. Finally, she couldn't resist it anymore.

"You're sure you're okay?"

"I told you I was - I am - and I meant it," he said, and she saw him smiling placidly out his passenger window through the corner of her eyes. "But thanks for talking to me tonight. Really. And checking on me this afternoon. Pushing me to talk to Elaine. And for taking me home tonight. Driving stick with that 'bad' right wrist of yours..."

"What was the question, Fleischman?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." She saw his grin again out of the corner of her eyes; he was enjoying the hell out of getting to her. 

"Fleischman!"

"Driving you crazy, isn't it?"

"You can't say something like that and not -"

"It was the first thing you asked; it's not my fault you forgot what it was. You missed your chance. Hour's up. And we are here. I am home." They'd pulled onto the gravel road that led to his cabin. "So goodnight."

"But it's not fair," she said, a whine creeping into her voice. 

"Neither's a lot of stuff. And rules are rules."

She took her truck out of gear and pulled the parking brake on. He turned to her, an expectant half-smile and dimple showing, knowing she'd have a comeback and awaiting it eagerly. 

"There's lots of ways to bend rules, though. Especially ones that don't make sense."

He chuckled softly. "Bending rules is your department, not mine. 'Night, O'Connell." He reached for the door handle with his right hand, and she put her hand on his left. He turned to her in surprise.

"Come on, Fleischman..."

His face was unreadable but his eyes were soft. She tried once more. 

"I never ask you for favors, but, just this once, I am. I fixed your roof. I babysat you all night. Played counselor. Got you home safe. And I'm asking you nicely, even though you're being a smug jerk."

His eyes were playful and teasing with just a hint of that something she was usually better at ignoring. "You're not, really..."

"Okay. Fine. Please?" 

He didn't say anything - just watched at her, grinning, with that infuriating, enervating look in his eyes.

"Pretty please?" This was getting embarrassing. She hoped his inebriated state would turn most of this into a hazy memory of his tomorrow.

His smile faded, and he leaned in suddenly, moving towards her. For a split second, she thought he was going to kiss her. She'd have let him, and she admitted to herself for the first time that she'd been wanting him to try. She closed her eyes, but his lips met her cheek, planting a soft kiss there. 

"Because I realized it wasn't what I wanted anymore. And what I want, I still don't have," he said simply, softly, against her ear, before pulling back, and turning towards the door he'd finally opened. "That's the answer. You figure out the question. Good night, O'Connell."

She watched him walk to his porch, her mind spinning, trying to connect that with anything even approaching a question she'd asked, but coming up short. He turned the key in his door and waved without turning around. She put her truck in gear and left, a thousand different emotions twisting and churning inside her, like the little pile of tiny, curled shreds of paper poor Holling was probably having to sweep off their table now.

Then, it hit her. The labels. Her question. _How's a guy who just got laid still as sexually frustrated as you obviously are_...

* * * 


	7. Chapter 7

* * * *

A knock came at the exam room door, wrenching him back to the present - and to maturity. They pulled away from each other but remained close. When Marilyn poked her head in, she smirked at what it seemed she'd intruded upon.

"There's a patient waiting. Broken finger."

"Thanks, Marilyn," he said, flushing red as she closed the door behind her. His eyes shifted back to Maggie who was hiding an amused smile. But not very well.

"O'Connell!"

"Me?! You're the one who did all of that! I was just sitting here!"

"Yeah, well, it takes two to...and anyway, you've been winding me up this whole appointment."

"Hardly."

"You've been coming onto me like a drunken sailor on shore leave."

"Not everything I do is designed to get a rise out of you, ya know?" She jumped down from the table and gave his tie a playful little tug. "Maybe next year we'll get through my physical without getting physical." She pulled her coat on and started for the door. "See ya at 5. I'm done, right?"

"Yeah. Wait, no," he handed her the papers still in his hand. "Your prescription."

"Thanks. Love you," she said, smiling, as she opened the door. "Hey, Marilyn," she said, as she exited.

Joel's eyes met Marilyn's amused and judgmental ones. Her silence he'd never learned to read, but he'd gotten better at placing her stares. This once was making certain unflattering assumptions he moved quickly to dispel.

"Her physical. Before you go any further with that thought. I need you see if we have anything here to start her on SCIT therapy this week, too, and if not, you need to get some serum ordered."

She just stared at him with that look of hers that spoke a thousand words for all the ones her mouth didn't. 

"See? Medical treatment is all we were up to in here. I will thank you to know I have enough self control that I wouldn't risk the ethical dubiousness of a quickie in my office with a woman I've lived with for...what?"

"You didn't say please."

He exhaled loudly. Every woman in his life today... He half-expected his mom to suddenly materialize, push past Marilyn, wipe schmutz off his face, and tell him to stand up straight.

"Please, Marilyn? And I need you to call her to schedule her injections. Twice weekly. She's having lunch with Ruth Anne later and then messing with her plane, but she should be home this afternoon." He paused, before adding, " _Please_?"

"Okay."

She didn't stop staring.

"What?"

"Your philtrum," she said quietly but triumphantly.

His hand flew up to his upper lip, annoyed with Marilyn for using precise anatomical nomenclature like that. That was his purview and just as off-limits to her as Tlingit was supposed to be to him. Not that she treated any barrier like it worked in two directions. He pulled his fingers away, anticipating evidence of a sudden bloody nose, but there was nothing. He looked back at her, confused. As usual, she just watched him fidget and flail for an answer without speaking. He walked towards his scrub sink to examine his reflection in the mirror above it.

"Lipstick," she added quietly, just before he caught a glimpse of himself. "I'll get a splint. For his finger."

His reflection revealed a telltale smudge of red just above his lip, which matched the color now rising in his cheeks. Damn. "Thanks, Marilyn," he grumbled, as he turned on the water and watched her silently pad out of the room. Even her back looked smug. He grabbed a tissue, wetted it, and wiped at his upper lip.

Maggie never wore lipstick. She must have done it on purpose - put forethought into embarrassing him in front of Marilyn! _I was just sitting here_ , he thought, snittily replaying her words to himself, still wiping. _I'm not doing anything_. That woman and the things she put him through... Then again, that kiss had been worth it. 

Marilyn poked her head back in as she ushered in his next patient.

"She left you a lunch. Homemade. Looks good."

He smiled at his reflection. Nah, it was _all_ worth it.

* * *

Joel climbed the Brick's three stairs in one step and pushed open the outer the door. He was late - extremely late - and he wasn't quite sure what that meant, although he had a pretty good idea. When he ran headlong into Maggie at the coat rack, the picture grew clearer. Her jaw was set and her eyes stormy as she zipped up her coat. Oh shit.

"Fleischman," she said tersely before pushing past him towards the door.

"Hey, wait," he said, snagging her elbow. "We have a date."

"No, we _had_ a date," she snapped, her voice quiet but just as angry at her eyes. "And you missed it. By two hours. So now I'm going home."

She pushed open the inner door and disappeared as Joel felt every eye at the nearest table on him, with looks that ran the gamut from bemusement to sympathy to relief that they weren't in his shoes. He sighed and turned to follow her.

She was around the corner by the time he caught up to her.

"O'Connell! I'm sorry."

She spun on her heel, still glaring at him. "It's our second date! How did you forget?"

"I didn't! Eugene's son broke his arm. I was walking out my office door to meet you when he called. I tried to call you at home..."

"Why would I have still been _there_ when we were meeting _here_ at 6?"

"Well, okay... in retrospect, now I'm realizing I should have called Holling or come by here. Look, I said I'm sorry. I was rushing out the door and not thinking. This happens to me a lot."

"Not thinking?" She folded her arms across her chest. "Yeah, I've noticed that about you" 

He saw a glimmer of playfulness in her eyes, despite her scowl, and felt immensely better, despite the work still ahead of him to fix this. "I've never really had to consider anyone else when something came up before. Here." He paused and held out the small bundle of flowers he'd had behind his back. "It's probably too little too late on this, but...happy second date."

Her face changed from fury to surprise in a flash. "You bought me flowers?"

He nodded, feeling suddenly shy and looking down at their feet.

"Oh! Fleischman..."

"I promise I didn't forget. Really. I've been looking forward to seeing you all day. I'm sure this is premature, but...O'Connell, I'm a doctor. And the only one around for 500 miles. If someone calls, I have to go. Regardless of what I'm doing at the moment. And you're gonna have to get to used to that. That is, if you aren't still so mad at me that you won't consider a third date." He scuffed his toe against hers. "And then a fourth one. And so on and so on..."

He chanced looking up at her finally - she was smiling to herself, looking at the little bundle of flowers that Ruth Anne had helped him assemble earlier. The older woman had smiled broadly as she guessed aloud who they were for - something Joel refused to confirm or deny. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to tell anyone about he and Maggie yet. The flowers had been on his desk in a vase of water all afternoon; he'd even managed to remember to grab them before taking off to Eugene's.

"You're not getting a third date."

He studied her face; it didn't at all match her words. She still looked happy and transported, smiling at her flowers.

"I'm not?"

She shook her head no as her eyes looked up at his finally. "Our first one was a disaster with the bug thing, and now you've missed most of this one. Don't you think the universe is giving us a sign?"

"I don't believe in signs, O'Connell." He frowned, growing more concerned about the blase tone she was using as she ostensibly closed the door on their entire relationship, just as it was getting off the ground. "You're telling me you're ready to throw in the towel on this - on us - over two bad dates?"

"No, I'm proposing that it's a little silly for us to be dating at this point. We know each other pretty well by now. We've been sleeping together for the better part of a year. You're in love with me..."

He felt his pulse start to race. "I _am_?"

She gave him a look. "And I'm in love with you."

His heart rate jumped again. "You _are_?!"

"Yes," she said calmly, looking at him like he might be a little bit slow and not at all like she'd just dropped two sizeable bombshells. "So let's just agree to skip that part."

"Okay. But...skip to where, exactly?""

"Right here." She pulled on the open collar of his coat, bringing him closer and briefly pressed her lips to his. "Is Morgan's arm okay?"

"Uh...yeah. Fractured ulna. Rode his bike across some ice." Joel looped his arms around Maggie's shoulders, half-expecting her to shrug out from underneath them and be angry still. "I _am_ sorry. Really. I haven't ever considered what I would do in emergencies now that you and I are... I don't even think people know about us... or to look for me at your place if I'm not at home... O'Connell, are we okay? You and I, I mean?"

"I know who you mean." Maggie kissed him again, her lips lingering longer on his this time. "And we are just fine, Fleischman. You know, I've dated a few guys in my life-"

"A _few_?"

"You'll shut up if you know what's good for you," Maggie said, cutting him off, straining to maintain her sweet and gentle tone. "But none of them ever brought me flowers."

"Really?"

She shook her head and slid the hand not holding her flowers up his chest and around his shoulders.

"To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure about doing it myself. You know, whether you're the kind of girl - _woman_ , sorry - who-" She pressed her index finger to his lips to shush him.

"Really. Stop talking. It was very sweet. You're making it less sweet. And I love you."

She removed her finger, and he smiled. "So... we're saying that now?"

"Well, we _can_. And I just did. Because I do," he saw a hint of uncertainty enter her eyes. "I know I told you you did, too, and I think I'm right, but, uh, if you could -"

"Oh, I love you, too, O'Connell. I appreciate you pointing that fact out to me just now, though."

He leaned in and kissed her, and this third time took. Three times now in what would be public if Cicely's streets weren't empty at night. He still couldn't get enough of kissing her. The way he figured, he was months away from making up for all the times he'd had the impulse to do it but couldn't. They stayed there in the cold winter air, long enough that his hands started to feel cold. He slipped one beneath the bottom of her coat. It went on so long that he'd started to wonder what, if anything, was going to stop them. He'd been fairly surprised when it turned out to be Shelly.

"No _way_!" Maggie and Joel turned in unison and surprise to see Shelly, garbage bag in one hand and her mouth covered by the other. "Knock me _out_! Dr. F? Maggie?" Realization seemed to dawn on her. "Hey... You guys aren't going out or anything, are you?"

"No," they both said defensively, in the same voice. 

"Oh." Shelly's face fell a little and her voice sounded disappointed. Maggie and Joel watched her eyes as they took in the sight of them, arms wrapped around each other, Joel's knee between Maggie's, both breathing hard, their mouths pink from being pressed together.

Shelly shrugged as that hint of gossipy suspicion disappeared from her expression. "Well, okay." She turned, tossed the trash into the dumpster, and went back inside through the Brick's alley door.

"Come home with me?" Maggie pulled back and hooked her arm through Joel's as she moved, tugging it to follow her. "I'll let you beg my forgiveness some more and then give you a proper thank you for the flowers..."

"You don't think we need to go inside? Tell people? I mean, the jig is pretty well up now. Shelly'll put two and two together on this. I mean, _eventually_ , she will. Don't you think?"

Maggie linked her elbow through his as they walked, smiling at her flowers again. "Then they'll know where we are and what we're doing."

"What exactly _are_ we doing if we're not dating?"

"I knew you'd ask me that." 

They took several more steps in silence as he waited for the rest of her thought. He gave in and prompted it. "Did you come up with an answer to it, too?"

"Only that you and I have the same problem."

"Each other?" Joel offered up, laughing a little. 

"See? The moment things verge anywhere near sincerity, you run off and take refuge in sarcasm."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"S'okay. I do the same thing. And we do it for the same reason. And that reason is our problem."

Joel nodded. "That deep-seated fear of abandonment that we both clearly suffer from?"

"Something like that."

"So what does this all have to do with no third date?"

"I guess what I'm saying is... well, the reason people date is to sort of test things out. See if they're compatible. If things are going to work between them. You know, make sure it's not all going to come screeching to a halt in an endless series of arguments."

"Luckily for us, this _started_ with a series of arguments..." He snuck a look at her out of the corner of his eyes and saw hers watching him nervously. He stopped and turned towards her. "O'Connell, are you trying to tell me that you already know?"

"Well..." She was never going to say it first. And she'd been brave enough to drop the last bombshell.

"Because _I_ know..." he said softly. "Three dates, or three hundred. It's still gonna be the same."

She nodded, and they leaned in for another kiss. Joel jumped when he felt something touch his back.

"Hey guys," Chris greeted them after he'd already walked past, walking briskly towards the Brick.

"Chris, too, now? God, Fleischman... everyone's going to be talking about us inside. You know that, right?"

Joel put his arm around Maggie and steered her towards his truck. "I really doubt anyone is that interested in what you and I are up to."

\-----

"Guess what I just saw?" Chris said triumphantly, as he burst through the front door of the Brick. 

"Well, get in line, Chris; Shelly saw 'em, too," Maurice said, from his seat amongst a good-sized crowd that was forming at the bar. 

"Where, out front in the street just now?"

"No, round the corner. Five minutes ago. They were still at it?"

"Hold on. Are you sure it was them?" Holling asked, feeling around behind the cash register.

"Definitely. Dr. F. and Mag were sucking face just outside the side door back by the-."

"I meant Chris, hon."

"He bought flowers today, too," Ruth Anne chimed in. "Wouldn't say they were for her, but who else makes sense?" 

"They were on his desk all day," Marilyn chimed in.

"She was holding flowers when I saw them just now," Chris added, nodding a Holling in thanks for the beer he'd just been passed.

"I saw her with 'em, too, when they were out back before," Shelly said, nodding eagerly. "Bet's over. And I win."

There was a cacophony of noise that rose up in response.

"Okay, let's stay calm people," said Holling, who had pulled out a tattered manila envelope with scrawled names and dates all over it. "Who had February of 1994?"

"Wait a second, wait a second," Maurice's voice boomed. "Now, let's stick to the rules here. That wasn't a date just now."

"Was so!" Shelly protested. "She was all dressed up."

"She had jeans on, Shel," Dave pointed out. "That's not a first date outfit."

"She was wearing lipstick," Marilyn added, quietly. 

"See? That was a date."

"He never showed up to it, though, Shelly, hon," Holling said, toweling off some water on the surface of the bar. "So I don't think it counts."

"He showed up enough to swap spit with her outside at the end of it! It was obviously a date!"

"But first date wasn't the bet," came Walt's raspy voice. "Was it?"

"Well," Holling said, sounding unsure. "Let me see what I wrote here; it was a long time ago..."

"And if we're going by their first kiss, I saw that happen, too. And it was at least 3 years ago!" Shelly had her arms folded and resting on her burgeoning baby bump, a determined look on her face.

"Yeah," Ed added, "I think Shelly's right. Dr. Fleischman told me Maggie kissed him right after Soapy died. That was in 1990."

"No, no, no this was at the ice party the next spring..." Shelly said, her head shaking vigorously.

"Well, he said she kissed him before that, too." Ed grinned a little. "So I think I win."

"Well, kissin' isn't gettin' together," Maurice grumbled. "The bet was the two of them, gettin' together."

Holling jumped in. "I _know_ something happened between them in Juneau - she almost took out his eye over whatever it was."

Ruth Anne chimed in. "Nothing happened then. That's why he almost lost an eye. Tonight was obviously their first date. The flowers seal it. He was blushing and nervous to beat the band, putting those flowers together with me today."

"Regardless of flowers, the bet sure wasn't about a first date that one of them didn't show up for," Maurice said, sounding irritated.

"Maybe they've already been dating, in secret?" Came Marilyn's quiet voice.

"I doubt it," Ruth Anne said, smirking. " _Nothing_ those two do together is done without a big fuss..."

"Maybe we should redo the pool for when they first have sex," came a voice from the back.

"I think that's what they're doing right now!"

"No, no. They've been doing that for awhile. At least back as far as when Mike left..."

"They have?! I thought that was a one-time thing."

"All I know is that they're both a lot more relaxed than they used to be. Him, especially."

"They haven't had sex," Dave jumped in, shaking his head doubtfully.

"They absolutely have," Ruth Anne snapped. "Remember their announcement in here that one night? That was last February. And I still say that's what counts. And that I win."

"It doesn't count if she turned around and did that same thing with Mike two weeks later!" Shelley protested. 

"And why not?"

"Wait!" Maurice jumped in, looking scandalized. "You're telling me she slept with that fruit loop in the dome?"

"Where have you been, Maurice? Of course she did. They dated each other for almost a month."

"If she was dating him, then she wasn't with Joel. So yours wasn't the winning guess, Ruth Anne."

"The bet wasn't 'get together and stay together'. It was 'get together'."

"But what does 'get together' mean?"

"I don't know but something happened with them last summer. You should see the looks they've given each other since then."

"If we're going based off of looks they give each other, this was over the moment he moved here!"

"Calm down, everyone," Holling said, raising his palms up in the air, calling for silence. "Now, I think we can all come to some kind of an agreement about a fair answer. Our only problem is a lack a specificity about the bet." Holling held up the envelope. "All it says here is, _Day, month, and year Maggie and Joel get together - closest guess without going over wins._ "

"Which obviously means their first date!"

"Which was tonight!"

"Not if they've been sleeping together since last year!"

"That was a one-time thing!"

"Like hell it was!"

A din of noise from the arguments and counterarguments on that point rose up from the bar. Holling held his hands up again to silence it.

"Folks. Folks. It looks like we aren't going to agree amongst ourselves here about this, and I know there is a lot of money riding on this bet. I propose we allow everyone to roll their existing wagers forward to a more definable milestone. I am now taking dates now for when those two tie the knot. Sound fair?"

"If those two get married, they'll just get divorced two weeks later," Dave grumbled.

"I don't know," Chris said, pensively, "they seem a lot more zen than they used to be."

"That's a load of bull!" Maurice shouted, pointing at Chris. "Didn't we all just see him miss their first date and her storm out of here?"

"I wasn't here."

"Yeah, but _I_ was," Shelly added. "And I saw them sucking face outside, two minutes later."

"I still say that wasn't a date!"

"Yes it was! She had lipstick on, like Marilyn said!"

"It wasn't a _first_ date, that's for sure."

"I claim next February," Walt jumped in. "For the wedding."

"There does seem to be something about February with those two," Ruth Anne added.

"He's moving back to New York next January, though," Holling pointed out.

"That's right...well, then I claim December."

"No way! Maggie wouldn't leave Cicely..."

"Well he's not staying here," Dave protested. "So this bet isn't fair. We really should be talking about the day they break up..."

"Already happened," Shelly said, matter-of- factly, wiping up another wet area on the bar. "They broke up over Mike."

"They weren't dating when Mike showed up."

"That's what they _said_ ," Shelly said, pointing at Ruth Anne. "They just told me the same thing outside, though."

"Outside, when you interrupted them necking like two teenagers at a drive in. Not dating my ass..." Maurice grumped, sipping his whiskey. "That boy's in love, and he's stayin'. I'm not even bothering to look for a new doctor.."

"Fine, you're so confident - what month can I put you down for, Maurice?" Holling frowned, pen poised. "Lotta money at stake," Holling tempted him.

Maurice scratched his chin, thinking. "Well. Fine. The way I figure things..."

It didn't happen the way Maurice had guessed at all. Even so, for all the wrong reasoning, when the time came, Maurice's bet was right date in the end, and he won the pool.

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

* * * *

"You do seem a bit sniffly, lately. And a little hoarse. I have been, too. What medicine did you say he was putting you on?" 

"Shots again. And some kind of nose spray stuff. I'm sure I have the prescription in here somewhere," Maggie said, gesturing towards her knapsack, resting on the bar, as she dug halfheartedly through her salad. She'd wanted sympathy about Joel being the way he was, not for her allergies. _Alleged_ allergies.

"I should really get in to see him myself. It's been at least a year since my last exam," Ruth Anne said after she'd swallowed a bit of her sandwich. She and Maggie had been reviewing their mornings together, complaining good-naturedly about the various men in their lives, from Walt, to Ed, and finally on to Joel. "But he'll just tell me I need to stop smoking. Again."

"He's right, you know," Maggie replied, as forcefully as she could muster. It was the truth; it was a nasty habit and one she was glad she'd finally managed to quit herself years ago. Even with right on her side, Ruth Anne wasn't someone who you told what to do. "At least about that."

"I'm sure that's true for most people, but ash is probably all that's holding these lungs together at this point, dear." Ruth Anne paused and smiled at her. "I do appreciate your concern, particularly when I know how heartfelt it must be for you to go on record as agreeing with Joel by giving it to me."

Maggie nodded, knowing today wouldn't be the day anyone talked Ruth Anne out of smoking. It was unlikely any would be.

"Apart from allergies how are you two getting on these days?" Ruth Anne dabbed at her lips with a napkin after taking a sip of water. "You know, I'm always grateful but a touch surprised when I drive past your place each morning." She laughed then, her joyful and throaty chuckle such a warm and welcoming sound to Maggie. "When I think of the girl you were in your twenties and then the boy he was... well, let's say sometimes I simply marvel that the place is still standing with the both of you inside it."

"We weren't ever _that_ bad," Maggie said, trying to sound chagrined but recalling their early spark-filled quarrels with amusement and nostalgia. "And we do fine these days. You might even say great. Usually." She frowned a little. "When I'm not sitting on his exam table, that is."

Ruth Anne didn't take the conversational bait and reached for her sandwich again, smiling at Holling as he filled a glass with soda in front of them. He nodded back a silent hello.

"Ruth Anne?" She decided she'd solicit Ruth Anne's opinion on this - whether she had a valid point or was just being insecure and petty. 

"Hmmm?"

"Well.... here's the thing," Maggie said, feeling a big head of steam building within her as she turned to face her dining companion. "He's not supposed to be my doctor, right? Doctors can't date their patients because it's against the rules and something about it making him do a bad job and... everything else."

"Seems sensible enough."

"Right. So he takes it out on me during appointments. He's very businesslike and not... the way he usually is. I don't know." She almost never revealed personal things to anyone but Joel, but when her problem was with Joel, the person she usually turned to was Ruth Anne. "It just bugs me, ya know? Like he needs to remind both of us the whole time we're some colossal mistake he's made. Is making. Whichever. And what gets me more is that he doesn't seem to know why it bothers me like it does."

"Maybe he does - have you asked him?"

"Oh, please. Even if he did know what was wrong, he'd no sooner apologize for it than... than... run naked down Main Street." She pondered her poorly chosen metaphor, given how many times now he'd joined the other men of Cicely and done just that at the first sign of spring. "Anyway, it seems like he cares more about complying with technicalities than he does that I... what?"

Ruth Anne's bemused smile wasn't quite the sympathy she'd been angling for. "He holds you at arm's length for one twenty-minute appointment and you start to come undone at the seams like this? You might consider coming around on that question you keep telling me you hope he's not thinking of asking you, you know - if you need the reassurance of 'in sickness and in health'."

Maggie gave Ruth Anne a pointed look and then turned her attention to digging through her bag. If one more person suggested that the solution to her life's problems came in the form of marrying Joel Fleischman, she'd...well, she wasn't sure what she'd do, but it wouldn't be very nice. Changing the subject was usually a good first step, though.

It's not that she hadn't considered it. Her parents' relationship, though, wasn't what she wanted for the two of them, nor did she like the impression that they needed rings and a piece of paper to make things feel complete. Even if she did kind of like the idea. Not the least of her problems was that he hadn't actually asked her yet; the closest they'd come was him asking gingerly one night what she might do to him if he ever did. Sensible, given that she'd spent most of the time that she'd known him trying to emphasize the gratuitousness of marriage in the post-feminist era. She'd responded to his inquiry by shrugging and trying to look disinterested... and then trying hard to ignore how disappointed he'd been.

"Just a suggestion, dear," Ruth Anne said lightly, patting Maggie's hand. "Not my business, of course."

"Here's that medicine - the allergy stuff Fleischman prescribed me." She held the small square of paper at arm's length, trying to get her eyes to focus on it without pulling out her glasses. "Oh, his damn handwriting - how does he expect a pharmacist to see what it says, if even I can't read it?"

"Budesonide," Ruth Anne read from next to her, pronouncing each syllable slowly, but, Maggie noticed with disappointment, doing so without so much as a squint. "I'll write that down, in case I ever get the patience to endure another lecture about the ills of tobacco from him and make my appointment. Do you happen to have any spare paper?"

"Sure, hold on... no, wait," Maggie, as she noticed the paper in her hand was really two. "Here. Looks like he accidentally tore off two pages - you can have this other one."

Ruth Anne pulled the paper nearer and picked up a pen that lay on the bar. Maggie left the prescription face up for Ruth Anne to copy from. She pulled money from her bag and put it next to her plate. She figured she might as well go - it was looking more and more like she was the unreasonable party, if even Ruth Anne was on Joel's side.

"Hey, Ruth Anne, I'll see ya later. Thanks for having lunch with me. I'd better go start on that prop. Can you make sure Holling sees this money?"

She rose and slung her bag over her shoulder. Ruth Anne's hand on her forearm stopped her.

"Your prescription," Ruth Anne said, handing back one sheet. Maggie saw a knowing smile play at the corners of her mouth before she continued. "And I believe this is also yours," she said, handing Maggie the other prescription sheet back. "I think he knows you better than you give him credit for."

Maggie glanced down at the paper in her hand, seeing and then squinting again at his nearly inscrutable handwriting, which was scrawled across the second page. 

_M-_

_I'm sorry about this morning, but I owe you being at least as good a doctor to you as you are everything else to me. And what's medicine, without the pursuit of the impossible?_

_I love you. Madly. See you at 5._

_-J_

"He can be quite sweet..." Ruth Anne ventured quietly. "When he wants to be."

Maggie nodded and slid the paper carefully into her purse. She gave Ruth Anne a small wave and turned to leave, smiling to herself.

* * *

"Hey, I'm...uh..." Joel looked sideways at Maggie as he drove to her place. He seemed nervous. His entire demeanor was on edge and jumpier than usual. Which was saying something, considering how high strung his 'normal' was. "I'm sorry about today."

"Yeah, well, I probably got what I deserved, getting scratched in the eye."

Her eye still stung like crazy - unlike most wounds, it never stopped feeling as bad as it had when it first happened and the compounding effect of an hour of her eye burning was making her cranky.

"No, I meant...about your dad," he said, his tone of voice gentle. "If I'd known you were that upset about that, I wouldn't have said all of what I did. Honest. You just seemed fine, and so I assumed you _were_ fine, and...I don't know. I'm sorry, though."

"'S'okay, Fleischman. I always give you plenty of leeway for your characteristic tactlessness." She hit back quickly with sarcasm to hide her surprise that he knew what was wrong. She bumped his shoulder playfully with hers, to try to let him know she wasn't cranky with him. "Thanks for driving me home. And for my fixing up my eye. Hey... you wanna come in?"

Okay, so it was a loaded question and a maybe a little bit unfair, but they were close to her house and she found herself wanting desperately not to walk into it alone. It had been two weeks since their last...whatever this was they were doing, and she knew her request surprised him. And raised some fair questions she wasn't really in the mood to answer.

He shifted his truck into park but didn't turn the engine off, seeming to hedge, probably hoping he'd be able to feel her motives out before committing with his answer.

"Well, I _could_ , I guess. Then again, it is late. You really should rest your eye, too. And I don't want to bother you when you're upset..." He was good at hedging and subtly shifting the ball back to the other person's court. Almost as good as she was. But not quite.

She snuck a glance at him, but his eyes were trained on his radio buttons, his face tense. She knew he wanted to know what was going on between them. She still wasn't sure herself, and inviting him in tonight wasn't going to make that any clearer. They just kept edging further and further into something that felt a lot like dating, only to pull hard back the other way soon after. 

"Please?" she heard herself ask. This was all changing the calculus quite a bit from their usual nights. It was getting a little too obvious here that she wanted this the most, as between them, at least right now. But the fact of the matter was that she did and she wanted it more than she cared that he knew that.

"Okay." He turned the keys off in the ignition. "On one condition. We have to keep the lights off."

She laughed in surprise at his frankness and leaned against his shoulder again. She felt a little pang of fear that his answer corroborated what she'd been scared was true - that this was just a physical thing for him. They'd been sleeping together off and on since the spring. She'd been trying to pretend it was just that for her, but the last several times, she'd found herself enjoying their time out of bed as much as their time in it. But if that's all he wanted, that was fun enough and meant she wouldn't be alone tonight. She stayed leaning against him and put her hand on his upper arm. "You're very presumptuous all of a sudden, aren't you? The eyepatch is that bad?"

"Oh. No. No, O'Connell... I didn't mean it like that at all," he jumped in, sounding rattled and nervous. "Your corneal abrasion. I didn't mean that I thought you and I would... Just that bright lights and a scratch on your eye are a terrible combination. A tear in the corneal tissue will hurt because of the distortion in how light is being refracted onto your..."

"Fleischman?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and come inside."

He helped her out of her truck and took her arm as they ascended her front walk and stairs. She knew full well an eye injury didn't require anywhere near this much assistance, and on any other day, she not only wouldn't accept it but would let him know - loudly - how sexist it was to assume she did. Tonight, though, she kind of wanted someone to help too much - to feel cared for, even babied a little. It didn't take a psychologist to know why, either.

He unlocked her door after two failed tries by her. Her depth perception was a total mess, and she felt glad in retrospect that he'd insisted on driving her home, bad as things apparently were. 

Once inside, he hung her coat on her coat rack.

"Where's this go?" He asked, holding up the knapsack she used so as not to have to carry a purse.

"Oh, there's fine. With the coat. Thanks."

This whole night wasn't going the way these things usually went. Normally, they barely made it through the front door and sure as hell weren't careful about where clothes got hung. Tonight, they stood in awkward silence, together in her living room. Enough time passed that she finally felt compelled to say something, be a good hostess, and keep him here a little longer. The silence had grown to be too much for him, too, and they spoke in the same moment.

"Do you want a drink or something?" "Can I help you upstairs?"

 _Upstairs_. He did still want that. So much for tonight not being like it usually was. Not that she wasn't interested. She didn't exactly feel like the best seductress, though, with gauze and tape covering her grotesque eye.

He reached past her and clicked off the light she'd turned on when they entered. "And you really do need these off. It'll sting worse than when you first did this to yourself." He paused, the awkward tension building between them. "Let's get you into bed."

He wasn't usually this assuming. Or impatient. 

"Okay. But help me take this stuff off my face first," she said, peeling at a corner of the tape on her cheek.

"Why? Wait, O'Connell, I didn't put that on there just for you to take it back off immediately. You need to keep that on there. Particularly when you sleep."

"Well," she said as the entire apparatus came free, tape and all. "Then you can help me put it back on afterwards."

"After what?" He watched her toss it on a side table and looked baffled.

She stepped close to him and put both arms around his shoulders. He looked even more confused. "After this," she said, kissing him. 

He returned her kiss eagerly and lifted one hand to draw along her cheek and then through her hair. God, could he kiss. She took several slow steps backwards towards her stairs, pulling him gently with her.

He looked cute tonight, too - in that disheveled but fussy way he had. He'd obviously rushed to meet her at his office, arriving in his sweat pants and a white t-shirt that he'd thrown a wrinkled dress shirt over - one he admitted he'd picked up off the floor. She slid one palm down the front of his chest under the dress shirt. With her other, she brushed the shirt off one shoulder and partway down his arm.

"O'Connell..." he murmured against her lips, his voice half-warning and half-playful. "I'm wearing that."

"Not for much longer..." she returned before going back to kissing him as she slid the sleeve off his other shoulder, intending to toss the whole thing across the floor as they neared the stairs. All at once, he stopped and shrugged back into his shirt.

"Hey!" She'd gone a half-step further back from him when she kept moving after his abrupt stop.

"Hey, yourself. Why are you taking my clothes off?"

She pulled back further to stare at him incredulously. "Because, Fleischman, if we're going to - _ouch_!" Opening both eyes had been a mistake and she quickly squinched her bad one back closed and put her hand over it. "Ow, ow, ow!" 

"I really wish you hadn't taken that eye bandage off." He stepped close again and put his hand to her shoulder. "Come on, let's get you to bed."

"That's what I was _trying_ to do three seconds ago when you started getting undressed in the wrong direction!"

"Whoa, whoa. You were still thinking we'd do _that_? Tonight?!"

She gave him a frustrated glare, with the eye that could manage it. Which turned out to be plenty. He looked startled, offering up a bewildered, "Sorry."

"I thought I made that clear when I said 'come in'! And then kissed you! What, you don't want to?"

"No! I mean, not 'no' - yes, I do. Usually. Well, I mean, not 'usually'; I _always_ want to do that. With you, that is. Not just... in general, with other... Not that there's someone else ... or that you and I are... and I don't mean I'm always thinking about... I mean, just if you're _offering_ , I'm always willing to..." He paused and looked like he was trying to collect himself. She almost felt bad for him, he looked so rattled. "O'Connell, help me out here. Please. What do want from me tonight? I'll do it, if you just tell me what it is."

 _Just stay here with me_ , she thought to herself. _Please. I don't want to be alone tonight. I need this. I need you. I'm upset about this thing with my dad. More than anything, I want someone who just knows that without me having to tell them. And you're the closest thing I've got, even if you don't know._

She almost said it, but lost courage. Instead, she pulled him close again and kissed him until he relented, kissed her back, and started them back up the stairs together.

Afterwards, and as was getting to be usual, he held her next to him and kissed her along her neck and shoulder. He was the only guy she'd ever slept with who kept this sort of thing up long after things were over.

"You cold?" His question and the situation took her back to that first afternoon in the barn, months ago. All the thoughts she'd been pushing away since they'd started doing this came hurtling back to her. What the hell was going on with them anyway? This was so, _so_ far from something she could continue writing off as a one-time thing at this point. 

"No," she lied. She was actually cold but she didn't want to do anything to prompt him to change what he was doing, in case it also prompted him to think about leaving. "Thanks, though, Fleischman."

"Sure." He breathed the word against her skin, still kissing her. Despite her answer, he pulled her closer and drew the quilt up around her. "You seem cold." He resumed kissing along her shoulder. 

It was like seduction in reverse - every time with Joel. He did everything other guys did, trying to get her into bed, once they'd already gone to bed together. She wondered if he'd been like this with Elaine. Or... whoever else he'd been with in his life. Tonight had been odd enough that the question just came hurtling out.

"Are you usually like this? After... you know."

He paused, considering her question. "You're gonna need to define 'this' for me, O'Connell. And 'you know'." He went back to kissing her.

"After sex. You're always so..."

"...so?" _Affectionate. Sweet. Smitten. Romantic_. What to say here to describe what he was without making him feel self-conscious and stop...

"Diligent," she blurted out. Crap, that wasn't the right word at all. He stopped kissing her. Damn.

" _Dil_ igent?"

"Well, no... I guess I meant, more... I don't know. Something else." 

"What, exactly?" His voice was wary and his posture stiffened, although his arms still encircled her. 

"Ardent," she admitted. "Is probably a better word." The implication was out there now - that he had something at work beyond his libido, when it came to her. How quickly would he move to deny it?

"Ardent?" She felt him relax again next to her, and he resumed kissing along her shoulder. "Ardent, I can live with."

 _Me, too_ , she thought to herself. "Well, are you, then? Like this usually?"

"'Usually' implies an ongoing pattern. And I'm not sleeping with anyone other than you. So if you can't discern a pattern, I'm not going to have any more luck at it than you." An artful dodge, on his part, even if he'd sounded nervous while offering it up.

"I'm not either - sleeping with anyone else, I mean," she said, answering the question he really hadn't asked, not knowing really what had made her feel compelled to do so. 

"No?" His voice was unreadable. 

"No."

He held her and kissed languidly along her back in silence for a long while. All at once, she regretted inviting him in. To go from feeling like this to laying back down alone after he left... she wasn't equipped to deal with that right now.

"Now, don't read anything into this," he murmured in a soft semi-teasing voice as he kissed his way slowly up the side of her neck. "Because the last thing I want or need is a lecture from you on why you don't need a babysitter or what a chauvinist I am for implying you might ever need my - or anyone's - help. But I think I should stay here with you tonight. I'm going to have to redo that eye thing you took off before you go to sleep. And then I think it's wise if I make sure you actually get to sleep okay. It's really late, too, so if I start my truck, it'll wake all your neighbors up. Mainly because you never fixed my muffler, like you promised. Regardless... and with your eye like that, you're gonna have trouble in the morning. Plus, I'd like to check your eye, first thing tomorrow, and I think I already have an 8:30 patient. And I know I don't make a practice of house calls, but this is a unique case." He paused before adding, with considerably less bluster, "Is that okay?"

He wanted to stay?!

"I suppose. As a medical necessity." She tried not to sound too happy as she smiled and snuggled back against him. "You ever spend the night with any of your other patients?"

"Just you." He kissed her shoulder once more. "Well, and Maurice. And don't be too flattered, but I prefer you. So far." He stroked his fingers along her arm. 

"Do we need to...talk? Or anything?" She asked the question, worried this was it - this was when they'd finally have the conversation. And she wasn't at all ready for it tonight.

"Yeah. I think we do."

"Okay," she said cautiously. "You first."

"Fine. Whatever happened to your brother's wife?"

"What?" Where the hell had that question come from? "Who, you mean Stephie?"

"Yeah. We left things that weekend and she was moving out. She seemed very...sheltered and unhappy. I always hoped she ended up okay."

"You did?" She was still stunned he didn't want to talk about this, about them. She'd been wholly convinced that was what he'd been about to say and was still struggling to change gears.

"You left me abandoned downstairs with those nutcases for an entire afternoon. Now you're surprised I passed the time by taking an active interest in their goings-on? I'm the first one she told she was leaving him. And I felt bad for her. Bad enough I've wondered about it here and there since then."

"Well... that's uncharacteristically human of you. Maybe even a little bit sweet... Let's see. They got divorced, I know that. She went back to school. She's working on her nursing degree, last I heard. Moved to Chicago." Why the hell was he talking about people he'd met once in his life for less than a day?

"And your brother?"

"Same as always. Works 80 hours a week and then complains he's not married. Now he's thinking my dad's got the right idea - just wait until you're older and rich and then get some woman years younger than you who doesn't care about sharing alimony with anyone else. My dad told him first after the divorce. I mean, after my mom, but before anyone else. Weeks before. And about getting remarried. The weird thing is, they never really got along, growing up. Dad and Jeffie. I was always Dad's favorite, and Jeffie was Mom's. And now, he's both their favorite, and I'm... I don't know. You don't want to hear all of this, do you?"

"It's interesting. I'm an only child. This idea that someone could be anything but both of their parents' favorite is a revelation." He slid his hand down her arm, laced his fingers together with hers, and gave her hand a squeeze. "So you're mad at your dad because he told your brother first?" 

How had he managed - in thirty seconds - to coax the conversation right to the topic she'd needed to talk about all night? Had he known - both that she needed him to stay and what she needed to talk about? 

"No. I mean, yes, but it's more than that. He started dating this woman in secret. And for good reason. She's only 41, Fleischman. Forty-one. She's less than 10 years older than I am. And my dad was hardly young when I was born. I figured he was just trying to get back at my mother, but... then they decided to get married, which he also never even told me he was considering until this announcement thing came in the mail. He's my own father! So I called Jeffie to commiserate, you know. See what he thinks. I mean, I can't exactly call my mother about this. Of course Jeffie's fine with it. In awe of him really. Like I said, sees this as a model of good male behavior. And the thing that really gets me about this - more than how old she is, more than my mom - is _him_. Not Jeffie, my dad. I thought he was someone better than this..." She suddenly felt self-conscious, like she'd shared far too much, and rolled over to look at Joel curiously. "Why are you asking me this? We don't need to get into it, really. I'm fine." 

"I know. You always are. But humor me just this once, okay?" He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The look in his eyes just then wasn't something she'd ever seen. He knew she'd wanted him to stay. And more that that, he was in love with her. She was absolutely certain of that in that moment. He gave her a little smile, seeing her hesitation. "Pretty please?"

She rolled over again to face away from him, settled back into his arms, and started talking again. They laid there together, talking, for hours. She told him just how upset she was with this business over her dad and why, best as she knew. Tears would prick at her eyes and crack at her voice, and he'd just kiss her shoulder and pretend he didn't hear it. Later, he helped her get ready for bed, and readied himself once she was laying down. She pretended to be asleep when he laid down next to her, still not quite able to face her realization about him. 

She tried to fall asleep after she heard him drift off, still thinking about her dad. And of Joel. _How is that Joel of yours?_ , her dad would always ask, when they talked. _And when are you finally going to come around on him, Margaret?_ There had to be a certain irony in that he'd - in a roundabout way - been the one to cause her to do just that tonight...

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

* * * *

The afternoons were slower and when Joel usually did his pathology work. Mornings were usually a rush of patients, but rarely did someone suddenly need a doctor at two in the afternoon. He liked the mix of active and quiet in his day and especially looked forward to shifting for a few peaceful hours from applied science to laboratory science. _Real_ science.

He'd always liked pathology - the chance to focus on diagnostics without having to incorporate the significantly more difficult social psychology aspect of medicine. Dealing with people had never been his strongest suit, although he'd adapted, and pretty well, he liked to think. Still, he enjoyed lab work. Not only did it come more easily intellectually, it more closely adhered to what he loved about medicine - finding clues and anomalies hidden amongst the mundane. 

It occurred to him just then that staying in Cicely meant that he'd always get to do his own lab work, too. If he'd gotten on with a huge Manhattan practice, he'd never do anything but send his labs out for analysis by some anonymous stranger. Here, he did it all. Not that he'd give Maggie the satisfaction of admitting yet another reason that she'd been right all along and that he'd be happiest staying here.

His first set of diagnostic tests today had been surprising and taken him down an interesting investigative trail. Regular bloodwork with highly irregular results. The high bicarbonate levels in an older patient's chem-7 test led him down the metabolic acidosis path, and he was soon checking leukocyte levels and flipping back through his patient notes, confirming she'd reported a persistent headache the last few days and had had a slightly elevated heart rate. In an instant, he knew he had it solved. He asked Marilyn to call her back in for more evaluation that afternoon - if he was right, he'd caught the start of a bad infection before it had done too much damage.

He grabbed the next two vials, which turned out to be Maggie's. Unlike the tests he was doing, their relationship was one of the few highly illogical things he'd ever done - a little experiment unto itself every day. He prepped her sample for the machine and inserted it, smiling a little and wondering to himself if she'd seen his note yet. He was still debating whether he'd ever hear from her about it when the machine had already finished its test.

He turned away from the impersonal blood test machine, took his own sample, diluted it, prepped a slide, and put it under the microscope. Even with the automated blood analyzer the state had grudgingly given him as a thank you at the end of his sentence, he still liked to do certain tests himself by hand.

He did a blood cell count and then stained the sample to check cell morphology. Once done, he swiveled back to the machine, pulled the printed results from its printer, and clicked a few buttons to run the second set of tests. He compared his CBC count with the machine's - _dead on_ , he thought - and smiled. That thing might have been faster and able to do more work at once, but his way was just as right.

He quickly scanned through the machine's long list of other results, and laughed a little to himself when he saw her slightly elevated thyroid function. Maggie had always run a little fast. He tucked the printout into her file and started into next patient's vials.

He prepped the next slide and tried to think what the chances were they'd end up eating what they'd discussed for their dinner tonight. She'd sometimes mentally prepare an elaborate meal, only to get home and get sidetracked. It didn't take much, either - a missing ingredient, an interesting article in a magazine the two of them could bicker over, or, if he was really lucky, a stray comment and the right sort of look from him at just the right moment would often totally derail her best-laid plans. And his.

* * *

"You don't have any pictures of this, do you?" He undid the last button on her shirt and tossed it across their bedroom. He'd never be able to shake this image. Not for the rest of his life.

"Fleischman! That was ironed! Don't throw it on the floor. And I'm sure there are pictures somewhere... I know my mother has some. Why are you so amused by this?"

"I meant do you have any here in this house? There had to be some kind of an outfit involved in this. You got a yearbook up here or anything?" He started kissing across her collarbone now, his hands seeking entry to the rest of her clothes.

Things between them, while usually good, hadn't been quite like _this_ in awhile, particularly not since they'd settled into a fairly domesticated existence together three weeks ago. Not that it seemed unwelcome - she acted just as diverted as he felt. He knew she was just trying to make him feel guilty for the sexist and chauvinistic reason behind his eagerness. He did, a little bit. But not enough to keep from picturing her...

"We are supposed to be making dinner right now. There's cold food sitting out getting un-cold on the counter and then other food getting too hot in the oven downstairs. I'm not sure we'll hear the timer all the way up here, and then I'll have had a second house burn down on me. And all because you're an idiot. So if you think for one second I'm going to hunt around to provide you with visual aids for this fetish I inadvertently triggered just now-"

"Fetish?"

"Would you rather 'perversion'?"

"C'mon. This is information I was not in possession of before today. Surprising, inflammatory, salacious, and frankly fascinating information about you. In all these years, I had no idea..." He'd worked her pants open with one hand and was sliding them off. He smiled when she brought one hand down to help him; she was definitely on board with this, despite her show of irritation. He put his lips back against her neck. "Maggie O'Connell was captain of the cheerleading team, huh?"

" _Co_ -captain. And I hated cheerleading. My mom made me do it. It's stupid, sexist, and unnecessary and..." He'd kissed from her neck to her lips, and she kissed him back now that he was near. He pulled back to look at her again, make completely sure she wasn't mad, and he saw exactly the glint he'd been hoping for in her eyes. He moved to kiss the other side, and she resumed ranting. "Having to prance around in a short skirt like that to cheer on the guys. As if a woman's entire purpose in life revolves around acting as a decoration for men. The activity - and the uniform - was demeaning."

"You still have it, though?"

"I'm not talking about this with you anymore."

"I know Shelly still has hers. Maybe you could ask if-"

"Absolutely not! I can't believe you! Surely you were exposed to cheerleaders at your high school. Why didn't that desensitize you to this impulse?"

"At Bronx Science?" He kissed down her neck, one hand fiddling now with the clasp of Maggie's bra. "Huh-uh. We had debate club. Engineering team. National honors society. No cheerleaders."

"Fleischman," she said, trying to sound haughtily above this but obviously failing fast as her body responded eagerly to his spontaneous pre-dinner idea. "I was in NHS, too. And took AP French. And AP chemistry. Why doesn't that turn you on more than the idea of some girl in a skimpy outfit?"

"I didn't say it didn't. And my interest in this isn't cheerleaders, in general. It's you... Did you have little pom poms and everything?"

"This is the most ridiculous response you've ever had to an offhand remark in all the time that I've known you. Which is saying something." Despite her words, her hands were at his waist, undoing his belt.

"What were your school colors so I picture this better?"

"Blue and gold. I cannot believe you right now. This is the most uncharacteristically immature and perverse possible reaction to -"

They both jumped at a noise from downstairs. 

"What the hell was that?" She said, pulling back to look at his face. "I told you we shouldn't leave all that food down there unattended. Something's probably burning."

Joel pushed himself up on his forearms. "Fires don't knock, O'Connell. It's just someone at the front door. And the food's fine for at least another half hour." He leaned back down and started kissing her again.

"Go and see who it is then," she said, pressing both hands to his chest and him back away from her. "Apparently, you're planning on spending the rest of your life picturing me as a cheerleader in a little pleated skirt," she said, half-glaring at him. "So this can definitely wait until another time."

"No, whoever is downstairs can wait. Or come back later. Or get eaten by a bear, for all I care right now." He leaned in again, but she pushed him back out of range.

"As you remind me daily, you're a doctor. You have an obligation to yourself, this town, your patients, and the profession - did I miss one, from your smug, self-important little monologue? Oh yeah - your expensive ivy league education. So on the off chance someone is bleeding out on my - sorry, on _our_ \- front porch right now, you and I will have to come back to this later."

He sighed in frustration and stood up, pulling his shirt back on and refastening his pants. He gave her a pained and pouting look that he hoped would make her relent but just made her laugh.

"Go. Be a doctor. You have my word, we'll reconvene on this right after dinner." 

He sighed again and walked out their bedroom door and toward the stairs. 

"I think I have that skirt in our closet, you know..." she called after him, teasingly.

He grinned as he descended the stairs, crossed their living room, and pulled open their front door. He felt like the wind had been knocked out of him when he saw who was standing there, two tattered green duffel bags at his feet. Mike Monroe. Great. Not that Mike looked that much more excited to see Joel. Surprised, yes, but not excited.

"Joel!? Hi. Is, uh...is Maggie here?"

"Mike? Wow. Uh, how...jeez. How you doin?" Joel extended his hand and shook Mike's before pulling it back and running it nervously through his hair. "God...long time, no see, huh? Yeah, she's here. She's just upstairs, uh...changing clothes. She'll be down in a second. She didn't mention you were, uh... I mean...how's Greenpeace going?"

"I just finished my tour of duty. So I'm taking a little break for awhile. You know... Can - can I come in?"

"Oh! Yeah. 'Course. Sorry about that." Joel helped carry one of the bags in and Mike hung his coat up on the rack by the door. "Come on in," Joel said, after Mike already had. "She didn't, uh...was she expecting you or...?"

"No. Surprise visit." Mike's eyes scanned the room. "She's redecorated in here." Joel felt a sharp pang of jealousy, at the thought of Mike spending any length of time in what was now his house. And with Maggie.

"Yeah, well, we had to move some things around. Make room for my stuff. You know how it is, combining households like that..." They hadn't, really - he had no furniture of his own. Maggie was just the type that liked frequent change, so Joel found himself helping her move some piece of furniture or other around at least once a month. He wasn't about to let the first chance he had to define their relationship to Mike slip past him, though.

"You moved in with her?" Mike's surprise was evident in his tone of voice.

"I didn't have much of a choice, really. She kicked out of my place, so-"

"How many more times are you going to tell that story," came Maggie's voice from the stairs, "And who are you telling it to this time? Everyone in town's heard it at least twice, Fleischman, you're really going to have to let that drop some...Mike!? Hey!!"

Mike leaned down and embraced her, and Joel noted with disappointment that she enthusiastically reciprocated. He felt the sudden and childish impulse to write 'MINE' across her forehead. She was, at least, wearing his Columbia Med sweatshirt - something that accomplished roughly the same thing and surely wouldn't escape Mike's notice. Joel eyed the entire reunion display in front of him, silently counting how many seconds the hug drew on for and trying to decide how many was too many. He was working hard not to scowl. He'd almost never had to face much relationship jealousy in his life, but the big exception to that had been - and apparently still was - Mike Monroe.

Mike kissed Maggie's cheek as he drew back from their hug, and Joel felt his eyes narrow. Joel took a step closer to Maggie, eked out a smile, and forced forward more awkward small talk.

"So you're between ships, huh? When's your next mission depart?" Okay, not the most subtle thing in the world, but Joel wanted to ensure he'd be leaving as quickly as he'd arrived. He could feel Maggie glaring at him.

"They're called tours. But actually, I'm kind of between careers for the moment. I did my tour, and, don't get me wrong, it was great. I just - I feel like I can do more with my law degree than sailing out in the open ocean. So I'm headed to San Francisco next week. Taking a job at their U.S. headquarters handling complex litigation for environmental infractions in international waters."

"Sounds lucrative," Joel said, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm - so much so he took an elbow to his ribs from Maggie for it. He smiled and felt a little less territorial for the moment. Nothing said 'I love you, you idiot' more than Maggie policing his immature behavior with other people.

"Come sit down! Tell us about everywhere you've been. And you should stay and have dinner with us tonight!"

 _He should??_ , Joel thought, mentally willing Mike to refuse. 

"No, no. I can't. You two have plans, and-" _Good_.

"Really. Stay. We eat together all the time. Anyway, I always make too much for two. It's eggplant parmesan. Pasta. Field green salad. And... you know what? I actually made that dressing you and I invented - you know, the garlic chives and the fresh shallot with the honey and the dill?"

And with that Joel went right back to feeling unhappy. With a dinner guest, they obviously were a long way away from resuming what they'd just been doing upstairs. And that was _Mike's_ dressing? She said she'd invented it and had omitted any co-creator, which was telling. Joel watched Mike smile at Maggie, and she smile back, still chipper and peppering him with questions about how he'd been and what he'd been doing. Joel felt infinitesimally better that she didn't already know since it meant they hadn't been in touch since his departure. But that also meant that she and Mike never closed the door any further on their relationship than they had the day he'd left town.

Another thing dawned on him. Mike had _bags_ with him at the door. He hadn't been planning to show up and stay with her, had he? For as much as Joel and Maggie bickered about petty things on a near-daily basis, they never fought about serious things anymore. He thought they didn't really have anything looming over them of any consequence anymore. Until it showed up on their goddamned doorstep. They'd never had it out over what had happened between them when Mike was in Cicely, either. Nor had she and Mike ever really broken up, he was realizing.

After ten minutes' worth of a conversation in which Joel was very much on the periphery, the oven timer chimed. Maggie rose, and so did both men; Joel was grateful for a reason to leave the living room.

"No, no," she said, as she walked into the kitchen, "you boys sit in here and catch up. I'll go finish the salad and check on the eggplant." She walked into their kitchen and checked the oven. "We'd opened some wine to have with dinner, too, if you'd like some." _Damn_ , he thought, _and now I have share Maurice-quality wine with the guy, too?_

Joel sat back down, once again trying hard to control the expression on his face. He and Mike eyed each other for a long while.

"So...you have a good doctor down in San Francisco?"

"I think so. There's actually a couple of guys at UCSF that study MCS. Haven't met them yet, but..." Mike shrugged. 

"That's great. Uh...San Francisco's a great town. So I hear, at least. I've never been. O'Conn...er, Maggie loves it. Been a couple times."

"I'm pretty sure Mike knows all about my infatuation with San Francisco by now." She had walked back into the living room and gave Joel's shoulder a little squeeze from where she stood behind the couch. "Fleischman, sweetie, the wine's breathing a little in the decanter - can you pour us all a glass? It might need a little more time, but it should be okay. I'm going to run up and put something else on. Give me 5 minutes, okay?"

 _Sweetie_? Maybe he wasn't the only one sending signals. Then again, she was changing out of his sweatshirt and into something presumably nicer.

As if reading his thoughts, she leaned down and whispered into Joel's ear, "Be an adult. I love _you_. You have nothing to worry about other than how you're going to make it through the next few hours knowing that I tried that thing on upstairs and _it still fits_." She kissed his cheek, straightened, and headed upstairs. 

"I'd better do what she says." Joel worked hard to stifle a grin as he headed into the kitchen with Mike following him. "Kind of the secret to success with us."

"Here, let me give you a hand, there Joel," Mike said, lining up the glasses for Joel to fill with wine. 

The door to their bedroom clicked closed upstairs, and the two men's eyes met. There was a long and awkward pause. 

"So, yeah," Joel said, diving back into the last part of their conversation. "Maggie's definitely fond of San Francisco. Maybe we'll come down there sometime. And stop by, visit you, if you're still around."

Mike eyed Joel, his look warm but wistful. "I know. She loves that city," he said softly. His eyes darted to the staircase and then back to Joel. "And I actually came here tonight to see if she might come with me. You know, pick up where we left off."

Joel froze. He'd talked himself into that he was being immature, paranoid, and petulant by assuming Mike had an ulterior motive behind his visit. He knew he should say probably something, but his mind was a blank. What the hell was he supposed to say - _wanna arm wrestle for her?_ Mike's attitude and demeanor were all wrong, though, for a guy who telling another guy he was here to try to take back his ex.

"I figured you'd be back in New York by now," Mike continued and took a sip of wine. He was smiling at Joel, but still wistful. "Wishful thinking. You know, the only thing I didn't like about Maggie O'Connell was that she was in love with you."

Joel nodded. There was no reason to deflect or protest; they both knew it was true. Mike was on the losing end of things this time, and Joel felt only sympathy. He knew all too well what it felt like to be in love with Maggie and have to watch her be with someone else. In that moment, both men seemed to make their peace with what had happened and with each other.

"If it's any consolation, she fought that feeling, kicking and screaming. Believe me."

Mike nodded and managed another smile. "You gonna marry her?"

"I'm sure as hell trying to," Joel said, grinning. He gave the staircase a worried look over his shoulder and turned back to face Mike. "You know her, though. Unless it's her idea, it's not happening. And I'm the only one who's talked about it so far."

There was a long pause, and Mike extended his glass to Joel. "Bygones?"

Joel nodded and clinked his glass against Mike's, smiling. "Bygones."

"She doesn't need to know that we had this conversation," Mike added, and Joel nodded, knowing that, regardless of his promise, Maggie'd have this identified and out of him in two days flat. She could read him like a book, particularly on the rare occasions when he was hiding something from her. The bedroom door opened upstairs, and they heard her footsteps approaching.

"What're you two talking about down here? It's so quiet..." 

"Joel was just getting me up to speed on the latest news from Cicely."

"Right," Joel said, frantically thinking if he was aware of any such gossip whatsoever, distracted by the amusing fact that Maggie had put back on the shirt from earlier and it had, indeed, wrinkled while lying on the floor. "And, uh, well, then Shelly and Holling had a baby, a little girl. Last year."

"Miranda," Maggie added, as she came to stand next to Joel. He handed her her glass. "I built myself a new plane, too. Ultralight. And... let's see, what else... Ron and Erick got married. Had a big ceremony here. Isn't that sweet? Are you staying with them while you're here?"

"Yeah," Miked nodded, his eyes briefly meeting Joel's before going back to Maggie's. "Sourdough Inn is their place, right?"

"Yeah, they just did another big renovation, too. You should see what they've done to that entryway. Again. Here, sit down, and we can start on this salad."

Dinner had been fine - it bordered, even, on pleasant, Joel decided. Mike wasn't a half-bad guy, on his own, and was infinitely more palatable now that he had his symptoms - imaginary or otherwise - managed enough that he didn't talk constantly about them. And wasn't sleeping with Maggie. Mike lingered a bit after dinner, said his goodbyes, and picked up his things to head to the Inn.

After Maggie closed the door behind him, she turned to face Joel, resting back against it. 

" _So_..." she started.

"So," he answered, trying for a finality in his tone.

"You want to talk about it?"

"About what?"

"Mike."

"Not really."

"C'mon, Fleischman. We never talked about it after he left. You don't want to talk about it now?"

"And say what?"

"Well... I'm sorry about what happened. For starters."

Joel smiled and started walking slowly towards her. "No, you're not."

Her facial expression changed in an instant to that uniquely indignant, flirtatious, self-righteous, forceful one she had. The one he loved. He kept walking towards her, watching it build. "I am so! Where do you get off telling me-"

He kissed her, ending her protest. As he pulled back, her eyes opened and met his.

"Fine," she said, smiling. "Maybe you're right. But I _am_ sorry it hurt you. I always have been."

"It's in the past," Joel said, kissing her quickly, as if trying to put a punctuation mark there and formally end this conversation. 

"That seems awfully easygoing for someone like you. Over something like that. And for someone who spent the first ten minutes Mike was here trying to will him into dying via spontaneous human combustion." 

"Mike's a decent guy," he said, as his hands slid down to her waist.

"You don't mean that. Not sincerely, at least."

"What do you want me to say, O'Connell? That I hated him - even kind of hated _you_ \- over all of that? Fine. I did. You broke my heart. You already know that."

She looked a little taken aback. "Not for sure, I didn't."

"Well, you did." He kissed her again. "And now you know." He knew what he was about to say would reward him with an argument and, hopefully, heading back upstairs. "And, hey, how mad can I really be? I got the girl in the end."

"You did not 'get' me. I'm not some trophy. Some scrap of meat the two of you were fighting over like wild dogs. Like some kind of -"

"I did so. He left, didn't he?" He loved pushing her buttons, particularly when she felt guilty and thus gave him a little more leeway to do it than usual. "You're mine, O'Connell."

"Yeah, well..." She said pulled closer to him. "Setting aside for a moment just how truly misogynistic and offensive that notion is, I suppose I am. And I'd forgotten that you're kind of cute when you're possessive and jealous."

He laughed. "A lot of good that did me back when he was here before..."

"I slept with _you_ first, if you remember... and I know you do. You have the scars on your back to prove it..." She moved her hands through the curls of his hair. "Which may be why you won in the end..."

"You think you can flirt and flatter your way out of every argument..."

"I know I can. And I've got a pleated skirt upstairs with your name on it." She'd crooked one finger through his belt loop and eased him gently backwards towards the stairs.

"What happened to you not wanting to be objectified?"

"I never said that. I said the uniform was demeaning." She kissed him again. "I happened to look pretty good in it, though, sexist though it was. Still do."

"Yeah?" He quickened their pace upstairs. "It's too bad I've only ever had that recurring fantasy about you doing AP chem work in a lab coat, huh?"

"Fleischman?"

"Yeah?" They were at the threshold of their bedroom and he was working free the buttons of her shirt for the second time this evening.

"He came here to ask me to move to San Francisco with him, didn't he?"

Joel's hands froze and his eyes met hers. "Yeah. He did. Only I screwed it up for him by not being back in New York."

She nodded and turned and walked away from him. "You know what the hole in his plan was?"

"Uh..." Joel's brain was still stuck in shirt unbuttoning mode, where his IQ was significantly lower than normal. "Me?"

"No. It's that, if you had gone back to New York, I'd be there with you right now. I _am_ sorry," she said, turning around from their closet. They exchanged a smile, and he knew they'd never have to talk about Mike again. She held a navy blue sweater emblazoned with the gold letters 'GPS' and an extremely short skirt up in front of her. "All of that said, the real question is whether you forgive me?"

"Yes, please," he breathed.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

* * * *

The front door to Joel's office chimed open, and he heard Maggie greet Marilyn. Her patient file was on the top of his desk, and he tapped it fondly with his fingertips. He rose from his desk after a few seconds' reflection to join the two women who ran his life, chatting together in his waiting room. 

He rounded the corner and saw Maggie, half-leaning, half-sitting, on the edge of Marilyn's desk as Marilyn signed for the package Maggie carried. 

"Delivering Red's mail for him, Fleischman. This one feels almost empty. What's in it?"

He leaned forward and glanced at the address information and then threw up his hands in mock frustration. 

"Ask her. She's the one that uses this office like a post office box for all her personal catalog shopping."

Maggie smiled at Marilyn. "Anything fun?"

"New yarn. Chenille. Royal blue."

"Yeah, well, you can enjoy it at home," he said, taking Marilyn's coat down from the coat rack and holding it open for her. "Here you go. I'll close up. And you can take off now."

Marilyn and Maggie exchanged a quizzical look.

"I don't know," Maggie answered. "He's moody today. Fleischman, you're being a little brusque, don't you think? Even for you."

Marilyn shrugged into the coat and took her purse and box and walked slowly out the door, waving behind her. "Good night."

"I'm sorry about him. I'm sure you're used to it by now."

Joel was right behind Marilyn as she walked out. "'Night, Marilyn." He closed the door behind her and turned the closed sign to face the street.

"You really need work on your people skills, Fleischman. Between you being so tense during my physical and now being short with Marilyn. How does she put up with you all day anyway?"

He locked the door, turned around, and smiled happily at her, which wasn't the right reaction to what she'd just said to him. She frowned.

"What are you so happy for?"

He laughed, and his smile grew. "Nothing. Come sit in my office with me while I finish up."

"Oh come on, Fleischman. You said 5, and it's past 5. I just want to go home, not stand around your office, watching you move around folders Marilyn's already put away and then complain about her filing system because you're so anal retentive that you... What?!"

"What what?"

"What is that look?"

"What look?"

"That one! Did you give yourself a lobotomy this afternoon or something?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, O'Connell. And this won't take long. Promise. Come sit."

"I'm fine out here," she said, leaning against the top of Marilyn's desk. She reached for the Popular Science magazine that Marilyn had been browsing - Joel's, of course - neither woman recognized his property rights. He snagged her other hand and pulled on it gently.

"Come on...please, O'Connell? Five minutes."

"Why? Are you scared to be alone in your office now? Oh. _Oh_..." she said, smiling slyly and tossing the magazine aside. "That's why you rushed Marilyn out of here - you're hoping we might... Well, if that's your big plan, you'd better rethink that 'five minutes' thing. I'm not going to all that trouble for just -"

He laughed, tugging her hand as he walked back through the corridor into his office. "I promise you, I am not trying anything like that. Just come sit, okay?"

She plopped into the guest chair opposite his desk, as he walked around it to sit in his. She kicked both feet up on his desk, something he normally went nuclear over, but which just made him smile again. She had to provoke him into something approaching normal behavior and tried for a little jab.

"You know, with that lab coat on, you almost look like a real doctor," she paused, watching him for any sign of the scowl that would usually follow. None came as he sat down. She just couldn't get a rise out of him this afternoon. She changed tactics. "You do look cute enough in it that I'd be willing to do whatever you claim you aren't trying to do in here, though, with Marilyn gone for the day."

He smiled again in response, but it was the wrong sort of smile again - not lewd, not conspiratorial, but fond and affectionate.

"How long have we known each other, O'Connell?"

"We just talked about this this morning - six years. Why? You hit your head today or something? You're acting very weird."

"Did I ever tell you what they told us the first day of medical school? Something that really stuck with me?"

"Be sure to pay your malpractice insurance premiums?"

He flashed that same out-of-place smile back. "No. They tell you the real trick to medicine isn't so much about curing people as it is about discovering what needs curing. I still remember the wording the lecturer used exactly - 'you are looking for what you don't know you need to find'."

"That's...sensible. I guess. What made you suddenly think of-"

"I didn't quite understand what it meant at the time, either. To be honest, I kind of thought it was entreaty to competitiveness - you know, try to be the smartest guy in the room - so smart you're finding the problems other people are too stupid to even be considering."

"You've always had that charming egotistical bent, haven't you?"

"As I've practiced, though, I've come to really understand what he meant - what that means. And not just with patients or in medicine. With life, I mean," he said, pausing but with his eyes trained on hers. "You, for example, are an excellent case study in that line of reasoning," he paused before continuing softly. "Being that you are what I needed to find that I never knew I was always looking for."

"Fleischman..." she said shyly, blushing and breaking eye contact, looking sideways at his cabinet. "That is an uncharacteristically romantic and philosophic sentiment, coming from you. Particularly for 5 o'clock on a Tuesday on a day that is not anywhere near any anniversary of ours. In an office setting, no less." She looked up at him again and quirked her eyebrow up. "What gives?"

"I found something today I didn't know I was looking for."

She looked back, wanting badly to cut through the awkward tension by saying something sarcastic. Her mind, however, couldn't get past the earnestly sweet look in his eyes. "Yeah? You wanna tell me what's going on?"

He put his fingers to the file on his desk, pushing it slightly forward and then back again a few times. His eyes followed the movement of the file, smiling that same inscrutable smile.

"I'd finished your blood screening and was doing the next patient's when I thought, why am I not doing a protein screen on her? You know, look at her immunoglobulin-E, prove she has allergies, since she doesn't seem to believe me about that, and see if I can get a read on their severity, see if I can predict the efficacy of the serum we're starting. I've got this machine now, and it does protein panel testing. I had enough sample left to run it. So I did." His eyes met hers again.

"And?"

"Well. You definitely have allergies, honey. Of course. And a pretty acute reaction to them at work within you currently. I have empirical data on this that I can show you, so I think we can put that argument to bed finally. The injections should help. Immensely."

"That's why you're so happy? Because you get to be right? That was the thing you didn't know you were looking for? You're always looking for that."

"No. It was chorionic gonadotropin."

"In my blood sample?" Her eyes widened a little. "Is that bad?"

"No," he said, grabbing her file as he stood. He bent open the folder so her blood panel results sat on top as he walked over to the other side of his desk. She pulled both feet off his desk and sat up straight in her chair, looking worried.

"I'm sure you remember I spent all morning trying to convince you of the necessity of not entangling this relationship with our other one. It's not only a black and white ethical rule but sound practical guidance. Doctors need to be unemotional with patients otherwise their clinical judgment gets clouded and their ability to diagnose is hindered."

"Oh we're not going to argue about this again, are we? Now you're going to start blaming me for your distracted diagnoses?"

He grinned a little before continuing. "And if you had but an ounce of vulnerability or I any sway over you whatsoever, this could be seen as exploitative and an abuse of my power. Which you don't, I don't, and it's not. But I mention it in further defense of this rule you don't like."

He set the open file on the desk in front of her and knelt down beside her, his teasing smile gone.

"What is it?"

"I've spent the whole damn afternoon trying to figure out how to do this and be dispassionate the way I'm supposed to be when I do. And then I think about what I'm feeling and...O'Connell, I have no idea how to separate clinician from love here. So forgive me for doing this wrong - on both fronts..." He took both her hands in his. "It's a protein produced in early pregnancy. And I wouldn't have even seen it if I hadn't done a complete protein screen just to prove you wrong for you questioning my allergy diagnosis."

"What?" Her face had frozen, her eyes wide. She'd heard and understood him, but clearly hadn't processed it yet.

"I keep telling you, I can't be an effective doctor like this. I knew I'd miss something. Which I did. I didn't ask you the most critical women's health question I should have started with this morning. Even though I know the answer. When was your last period? Two weeks longer than 28 days ago. Am I right?"

* * *

Realization started to replace shock, and Maggie closed her eyes. She found herself suddenly facing him, standing outside, on a day not terribly long ago. He'd stopped her to talk in the forest, when she blurted out that she hated babies and never wanted to have one. He looked shocked, and she tried to backpeddle and justify her stance. He agreed with her and started to laugh, as the awkward tension finally evaporated between them. He'd been walking on eggshells with her all day, certain this baby shower of Shelly's was upsetting her. It had been, but now he finally knew the real reason why. She laughed back, just glad he didn't hate her for what she'd said, and their eyes settled back on each other as their laughter slowed. Joel spoke first, touching her arm as he did. "See, we have something in common."

"Yeah..."

She had realized in that moment just how well she'd gotten to know him over the years. He was lying - or at least greatly embellishing his agreement - about never wanting kids. He was saying it to make her feel less like a pariah. She saw something else, too; he was talking himself into something. The thing was, the moment she'd said what she did, she realized he'd been right all day. Sort of.

She'd always hated babies. As a girl, she'd eschewed the dolls her mother bought her, playing instead with blocks and Jeffie's little green army men and Tonka trucks. She wanted a toy that _did_ something, _was_ something. Not an obligation. Her best friend in kindergarten had a favorite, cherished doll that drank from a bottle and then wet its diapers. Even as a little girl, Maggie's mind reeled at the notion that that was something fun to do at playtime. As an adult, she had come to realize she didn't have a nurturing bone in her body, and she spent a lot of energy wondering what in the hell was wrong with her every time the subject came up. Now it was Joel who knew about it, and he was working to shrug it off with a laugh and his agreement. Something grated at her, still, about what she'd said. That hadn't been what she meant completely, but how to explain it? Especially to him.

"But for you, it's different, you know," she said, as they resumed walking through the trees, the leaves crunching beneath their feet. "You're a man. You said it yourself; if you're a woman, you're supposed to _want_ to brood."

There - she'd pointed out what he'd been failing to realize. Something _was_ wrong with her. She was the thing that was broken. It wasn't that she was jealous of Shelly. It was that she was jealous of women who _were_ jealous, like they were supposed to be.

"Yeah," he said cautiously, the complexity of her feelings was finally dawning on him. "I...I guess I said that to make you feel better."

"Well, it was true. People - especially female people- are supposed to want to have babies."

"Well, yeah. I mean...I mean, maybe some people. I guess, when they find the right _other_ people..." 

She turned to look at him, but he quickly averted his eyes, looking just past her. "You know, people feel extreme emotions for other people, and I...I guess procreation is...it's like the ultimate tangible means of expressing that extreme emotion..." 

The memory faded for a moment and she came back to being still seated in Joel's office, with him kneeling beside her, her hands in his, looking up at her expectantly.

She closed her eyes again and was back in the forest beside him again on that same warm, un-winterlike day as they searched for Shelly. "You know?" he said, sounding nervous.

She did. She knew sitting in his office, now, what she first realized then - exactly why a girl who never wanted a thing to do with babies feel might someday feel differently about that. What the magic word was for the thing that had started to change and would keep changing them both. She remembered still thinking it was still too new, too undefined, and that he wouldn't say it first. So she'd been the one to supply it.

"Love?"

Walking next to her, she watched Joel cast his eyes shyly down to his shoes, feet shuffling through the brown leaves. "Well, as an example...yeah..."

She took a few steps with him and stole a glance at him a few seconds later; he was doing the same thing. They smiled at each other and then walked together in silence, their arms and hands brushing every so often as they moved.

* * * *

Back in the office, he was still smiling up at her, waiting for everything to register.

"You mean I'm..."

He nodded, hoping her reaction would be a happy one.

"Oh my God... Fleischman!" Her whole face broke into a smile.

"You okay, O'Connell? I know this is a surprise, and one that kind of falls disproportionately on you..."

She felt elated but just laughed and nodded happily in response to his question. "Yeah. How 'bout you, though?" She paused for a second and then started talking again, to cut off any kind of awkward pause that may have been coming. She was suddenly and deeply afraid he didn't want this. "Oh please, tell me you're okay with this, too? I know this wasn't your plan, and I know I keep putting off talking about us getting...well, you know," she paused again, still terrified of the word. 

"Married?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "And it's my fault. I know that. And then there's the whole Presbyterian/Jewish thing..."

"Who's Presbyterian?"

" _I_ am!"

"Since when?"

"Well, I used to be. It's not like I still...so I should probably be the one who... And, look, I know I told you before that I didn't want to have a... or even really like them... but you said you didn't want one either... and... but... and now we _are_. I mean, I am, but I want us to... you're okay with this, right? Oh _please_ say yes."

"O'Connell, you're rambling. And I couldn't be happier," he said, beaming up at her. She put her arms around him and hugged him tight. "I've been walking on air all afternoon."

"I love you..." She murmured into his hair.

"I love you, too...we can do this? Right?"

She pulled back to look down at Joel, whose wide, joyful, but slightly terrified eyes made him look suddenly young to her. The gravity of the moment began to wash over them both, and all at once, another, much more distant memory came flooding back.

* * *

"We had a baby today," she shouted cheerfully over the din of her engine, smiling sideways at him, sitting in the passenger seat beside her. 

"I couldn't have done it without you," he said, and meant it, his compliment unhesitating and heartfelt. "You came to teach them how to floss, but you did okay."

"Did I?"

"Yeah! You were splendid."

"Yeah, well, you weren't so bad yourself, you know." She paused, considering whether she wanted to say what she finally did. "You looked good holding a baby." For some reason, the thought made her feel several emotions simultaneously. Happy to get a glimpse of Joel all grown up, a father. She felt sad, too, because she knew she wouldn't ever see it - this'd be years down the road and in New York with Elaine, of course, when she and Cicely were a distant and probably hated memory of his. There was something else, too, but she wasn't quite sure what it was beyond that the emotion didn't make a bit of sense.

"Good?" He sounded unsure of himself, something he never was, oddly looking to her like her opinion on the subject was an authoratative one.

"Yeah. You know, natural."

"I did?" He was smiling like crazy now.

"Yeah." She paused, unable to stop from asking, "How'd I look?" Had he seen it? That curious flash she'd felt, holding that baby and smiling with him at their shared role of bringing him into the world.

"You looked...you looked comfortable." That wasn't the word she'd have guessed he'd use if she'd had fifty tries. But it was suddenly the highest compliment he'd paid her so far. Something new sparked in his eyes - and something had, unbeknownst to Maggie, changed with how Joel saw her a little bit. That same thing she'd felt about him; the one that made no sense at all.

"I did? Thanks..."

* * * *

In Joel's office, Maggie rested her forehead against his, and they stayed close together, their eyes closed, arms around each other. They didn't know it, but they were both recalling that some moment from their shared past. Smiling, sitting together in comfortable silence in Maggie's rattly, cramped cockpit, soaring ahead towards a vast and uncharted terrain that kept unfolding before them. Something new had bound them together, and they both felt glad to be sharing the journey with person currently by their side. As they held each other in his office now, they felt that same feeling all over again. And it was all something very close to magic.


End file.
